Hi Magnus, for sure, I am going to do CMake cheerleading.
I think OpenJDK would profit from a change to CMake: 1. Less tools required for building: CMake + gmake/Ninja/msbuild/Xcode instead of Autotools and all the related Linux/Unix tools, that are somewhat alien to Windows and OS X. Visual Studio even provides its own CMake. 2. More choices to actually build the project: Use integrated build tools of IDEs (Visual Studio, Xcode) or use Ninja, which is faster than gmake 3. Today, from what I hear, more people are familiar with CMake compared to Autotools. This argument can be applied to how familiar user are building OpenJDK and to how familiar potential contributors are. And I know, you developers know your code base :-) 4. CMake is better supported by IDEs like Visual Studio, Qt Creator, KDevelop. 5. A lot of code bases were ported to CMake like KDE, Qt, or LLVM. Their arguments apply here, too. Also their trade-offs between investment and benefit. > At various times, I have dreamed of replacing the configure script with > something that is more modern and easy to maintain than this bash/m4 > mix. We have a very well-defined API for the configure script: the user > calls "bash configure" in the root directory of the project, with a set > of --options, and as a result we create a spec.gmk file that defines the > configuration. This could easily be replicated in another system. But if > I were to rewrite this from scratch, I'd rather write the whole > configure logic in Java (apart from some thin shell script logic needed > to find the boot jdk), rather than trying to shoehorn in our build model > in CMake. I understand your temptation, but writing and maintaining all the configure/find logic and quirks will be a burden. I'd try to reduce the build system code to a minimum and rely on a third-party solution to do as much as possible for me. Bye Christoph -- Als wär es nix, leb' ich von [IT] und mach' nur, was ich lieb' Lebe wie im Paradies, womit hab' ich das verdient? Die Wahrheit ist: Hab' ich nicht, ich bin nur reicher beschenkt Als jemand in einem armen Land mit dem gleichen Talent [frei nach Tua von Die Orsons - Oioioiropa]
