[Python-Dev] Evaluated cmake as an autoconf replacement (original) (raw)

Steve Holden steve at holdenweb.com
Tue Apr 7 03:35:22 CEST 2009

Ondrej Certik wrote:

Hi,

On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 10:21 AM, Jeffrey Yasskin <jyasskin at gmail.com> wrote: I've heard some good things about cmake — LLVM, googletest, and Boost are all looking at switching to it — so I wanted to see if we could simplify our autoconf+makefile system by using it. The biggest wins I see from going to cmake are: 1. It can autogenerate the Visual Studio project files instead of needing them to be maintained separately 2. It lets you write functions and modules without understanding autoconf's mix of shell and M4. 3. Its generated Makefiles track header dependencies accurately so we might be able to add private headers efficiently. I am switching to cmake with all my python projects, as it is rock solid, supports building in parallel (if I have some C++ and Cython extensions), and the configure part works well. The only disadvantage that I can see is that one has to learn a new syntax, which is not Python. But on the other hand, at least it forces one to really just use cmake to write build scripts in a standard way, while scons and other Python solutions imho encourage to write full Python programs, which imho is a disadvantage for the build system, as then every build system is nonstandard. [obirrelevance]

Isn't it strange how nobody every complained about the significance of whitespace in makefiles: only the fact that leading tabs were required rather than just-any-old whitespace.

I guess some people just home in on things to complain about.

regards Steve

Steve Holden +1 571 484 6266 +1 800 494 3119 Holden Web LLC http://www.holdenweb.com/ Want to know? Come to PyCon - soon! http://us.pycon.org/

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