I just did some comparisons about cmake and something better like… autotools?<\/p>\n
Step 0:<\/p>\n
Some numbers just for fun:<\/p>\n
nemesi lu_zero # qlop -tH cmake
\ncmake: 13 minutes, 35 seconds for 1 merges
\nnemesi lu_zero # qlop -tH make
\nmake: 1 minute, 0 seconds for 2 merges
\nnemesi lu_zero # qlop -tH bash
\nbash: 2 minutes, 32 seconds for 3 merges
\nnemesi lu_zero # qlop -tH perl
\nperl: 7 minutes, 52 seconds for 4 merges
\nnemesi lu_zero # qlop -tH m4
\nm4: 32 seconds for 1 merges
\nnemesi lu_zero # qlop -tH automake
\nautomake: 1 minute, 8 seconds for 7 merges
\nnemesi lu_zero # qlop -tH autoconf
\nautoconf: 30 seconds for 4 merges<\/p>\n
Ok cmake is a ugly hog at least while building.<\/p>\n
Step 1:
\nWhat you want from your build system:<\/p>\n
– take as little resources as possible
\n– have it as much portable as possible
\n– have as little as possible to write
\n– have a good way to express conditionals
\n– let you have your program correctly built on a large number of arches.
\n– automagically spot dependencies
\n– let you use tools like distcc and ccache in an effective way<\/p>\n
Step 2:<\/p>\n
Uglyness scale before cmake:<\/p>\n
imake, scons: bad ideas with a bad implementation, everybody knows that, somebody is workarounding scons a lot, I hope for a fork.<\/p>\n
qmake: not sure which part is bad, nobody likes to use it that much for a reason or another.<\/p>\n
plain make: simple and to the point, it may not scale that well.<\/p>\n
autotools: most people misuse them, many despise certain choices. The lack of good documentation and the version incompatibilities made them in a bad light, things are getting better little by little. The most used system despite the ugly Makefiles produced. I’d use them with their reference at hand.<\/p>\n
kbuild: it is wonderful, works really well once you lay it out, it is even simple! Problem: you don’t have a stand alone template to fill so it is much an hacking over existing deployments.<\/p>\n
Step 3:<\/p>\n
put cmake in the scale:<\/p>\n
1- takes forever to build
\n2- is compact
\n3- uses the same approach as aclocal m4 files (call them Modules\/*.cmake) but has a risible number of them.
\n4- supports less platforms than autotools
\n5- the syntax is a brain damage between imake and autotools
\n6- Hype points because kde4 could use it<\/p>\n
Step 4:<\/p>\n
When it could have sense:<\/p>\n
1- your project is targeting what cmake supports already
\n2- you like its brain damages more than others
\n3- you misused autotools and now you are trying to misuse another build system (hopefully it won’t make you misuse it that much).
\n4- you absolutely love the ability to have project files for some commonly used proprietary ides out of the cmake native files.
\n5- you want to gain some hype points to your project.<\/p>\n
Summary:<\/p>\n
cmake is a wonderful technology that should take the way of the dodo and never touch your hard disk, gives nothing more than a lobotomized autotools (and that is good since you can commit less mistakes) has the good mix of hype points and laziness compliant features.<\/p>\n
In short cmake developers feel free to ignore me, this is a rant, I hadn’t wrote a build system that will be used by a large project and probably I’m not so entitled to write such large stain of venom.<\/p>\n
You obviously can take it seriously and prove me wrong with a next version with 1\/2 the build time, less overhead and a nicer syntax.<\/p>\n
UPDATE:<\/p>\n
flameeyes told me that cmake doesn’t have a way to set cflags\/ldflags\/asflags on a per target basis. So it is a wonderful regression to pile up to the rest…<\/p>\n
UPDATE2:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/dev.gentoo.org\/~lu_zero\/development\/cdrkit-1.0pre3.tar.bz2
\nI played a bit with autotools to see how bad they are and\/or how good cmake is…
\nI started from scratch for the first time using autotools…
\nThere are some minor changes but nothing interesting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I just did some comparisons about cmake and something better like… autotools? Step 0: Some numbers just for fun: nemesi lu_zero # qlop -tH cmake cmake: 13 minutes, 35 seconds for 1 merges nemesi lu_zero # qlop -tH make make: 1 minute, 0 seconds for 2 merges nemesi lu_zero # qlop -tH bash bash: 2 … Continue reading CMake… why?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1aGWH-1a","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/lu_zero\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/lu_zero\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/lu_zero\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/lu_zero\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/lu_zero\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/lu_zero\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/lu_zero\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/lu_zero\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/lu_zero\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}