Just a comment. the OpenSSL build already depends on Perl and Perl already has a "Make" of it's own . That would at least relieve some of the problems with being dependent on "lowest common denominator" features common to the various platform makes.
I'll admit, I have no idea whether the Perl variant of make is an improvement or not, but at least it would remove one dependency and provide the same features across platforms. Peter From: Nathan Typanski <ntypan...@gmail.com> To: openssl-dev@openssl.org Date: 15/08/2014 09:40 AM Subject: Re: Single-Makefile Build Experiment report Sent by: owner-openssl-...@openssl.org On 08/14, Tim Hollebeek wrote: > Have you considered moving to CMake? It makes lots of the issues > you discuss in the document just go away. cmake should work on the > vast majority of supported operating systems, if not all of them ... Cmake has disadvantages. I haven't actually used it enough to comment on what it's like to use, but I can link to a project that has: <https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Build_System_Analysis#CMake> OpenOffice was trying to solve the recursive make problem in their project, much like OpenSSL is attempting. They ultimately decided against CMake and gave a good writeup of their reasoning. There's also a nice debate at LWN.net about GNU Make/CMake and the related tradeoffs. <http://lwn.net/Articles/466137/> Also, consider the scenario: - I'm an embedded developer and I want to compile OpenSSL on my embedded system (or any platform that isn't my workstation). It doesn't have CMake, I can't get CMake on it or don't have the resources (or desire) to get CMake installed on the target platform. - To solve this, I download OpenSSL on my workstation and tell CMake to generate a GNU Makefile for me. I copy the source over to the platform I want to build OpenSSL on. - I do `./configure && make && make install` and pray. - The build fails and dumps and unhelpful error message. I go digging into the generated Makefile looking for the build error and realize CMake has built absolute paths into everything. - I go on the CMake wiki and read this: < http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/CMake_FAQ#Why_does_CMake_use_full_paths.2C_or_can_I_copy_my_build_tree.3F > where the answer is basically "no, you can't use CMake like that. Go install CMake on your embedded device, or figure out how the hell to cross-compile a CMake build". - Researching cross-compiling CMake turns up this: <http://blog.beuc.net/posts/Cross-compiling_with_CMake/> - I come complain on this mailing list because OpenSSL has rejected both GNU and UNIX-like standards in favor of this stupid "more advanced" build system. Maybe I'm biased, but from what I've seen with projects using CMake, CMake is only portable in the sense that KDE is portable: yes, if you're willing to enforce complete buy-in from the users/packagers/maintainers, people can build OpenSSL easily on more than one system. But from my eyes it doesn't look like a low-level, relatively tiny C library has any good reason to switch to CMake. Nathan ______________________________________________________________________ OpenSSL Project http://www.openssl.org Development Mailing List openssl-dev@openssl.org Automated List Manager majord...@openssl.org ______________________________________________________________________ OpenSSL Project http://www.openssl.org Development Mailing List openssl-dev@openssl.org Automated List Manager majord...@openssl.org
