Re: [boost] CMake Announcement from Boost Steering Committee

Subject: Re: [boost] CMake Announcement from Boost Steering Committee
From: Ion Gaztañaga (igaztanaga_at_[hidden])
Date: 2017-07-19 12:19:55

On 19/07/2017 3:48, John McFarlane via Boost wrote:

> I'm sure this is how a lot of C++ users out there feel.  Yes, anyone who
> can learn C++ can learn another build system.  But why require more burden
> than is strictly necessary?  CMake is the very clear trend across the
> broader community.  Yes, it's far from perfect -- despite a monumental
> clean-up effort.  But more developer systems have CMake installed already.

CMake, for instance, does not really build. AFAIK, it generates build 
instructions for the real build system.

This is unacceptable to me, I want something that really builds the 
program and also runs tests from the command line, I want to use the 
same commands in Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and other systems where I test 
my software. I don't want to waste my time recreating MSVC projects 
every time I build. I want regression tests to continue working nicely 
and portable passing common useful options that work in every system.

CMake is popular, no doubt. So is autotools, and no one is proposing it 
for Boost. I have no problems to switch to CMake if:

- Cmake does everything Boost.Build does with the same or less work.
- Cmake performance is equal or better.

CMake popularity is not important for me as a Boost programmer, in some 
years CMake will be replaced by another super-popular build system. For 
users we can automatically generate CMake projects from Boost.Build, and 
maybe other popular build systems.

Ion