Re: Fwd: [CMake] Adding cross-compiler support to CMake ... (fwd)

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Arjen Markus wrote: Arjen Markus wrote: Don't forget all those PCs with Windows installed but no Cygwin or MingW: they simply can not use the configure scripts. Of course, one can require these users to install Cygwin or MingW, but what is that different from installing CMake? The level of pain. Cygwin is easy. It just takes a lot more MB of downloads to have a working system, than to grab CMake. Or, uh, you can grab the CMake that's in Cygwin. :-) Hm, I was thinking more of the end-users than developers :). Only Unix people think that "end users" run ./configure scripts or CMake.  In the Windows world, if you're running a compiler, you're a developer.  You may be a developer who wants a painless build, but you're still a developer.  The answer for an end user is CPack, not CMake.  Even for most Unix developers, the answer is a modern packaging system.  Only weenies want to sit around building huge stacks of libraries all day long. MinGW / MSYS has become *awful* if you're trying to get Autoconf going. I spent an entire day on it recently and almost gave up. The only thing that saved my ass was a rogue 3rd party project called mingw-install. http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw-install It *nukes* the whole MSYS mess and puts in a bunch of stuff that actually works, with the most current versions of Autoconf and whatnot. Thanks for the tip! I have never been able to grasp the information on the home page - what packages I need etc. A simple receipe would have done: "if you are a typical user/developer, get this and this." Being similarly befuddled, I read the archives about this.  It seems that at least one of the MSYS leads simply doesn't care, and won't be lifting fingers for Autoconf.  Which boggles me, since I always thought the point of MSYS was to be able to run Autoconf, but I guess that's not so.  I don't know what people are doing with MSYS if not using it to build GNU-ish stuff.  Pretty little shell?  Geez, who cares?  The MSYS guys definitely don't think they're supposed to be a fullblown Unix-under-Windows like Cygwin, they think they're supposed to be a Minimal SYStem.  They won't do anything which pulls them in the direction of being like Cygwin.  So, what *do* they want to do?  I think there's a problem of cultural definition afoot.  Maybe if I lurked on their mailing list long enough, I'd figure it out and be capable of uttering the right magic words. Cheers, Brandon Van Every

_______________________________________________
CMake mailing list
CMake@cmake.org
http://www.cmake.org/mailman/listinfo/cmake