I hit send by accident.... here is a better version.
So what's the status of scons and cmake now?
Is either able to replace autotools right now or are there still some
targets working with autotools only?
I can not speak for Peter, so I can only compare scons with autotools,
Convenience: scons > autotools.
After your first run, which may need some parameters to set qt_dir
etc, all subsequent runs are simple commands like 'scons install'. No
autogen and configure stuff.
Performance: scons ~ autotools.
null build of scons seems to be a bit slower.
Installation: scons > autotools
scons is much easier to install than autotools, and version
compatibility of autotools can be a nightmare.
Reliability: scons > autotools
autotools may fail after successful configure because of incomplete
check. scons seems to be better. Also, autogen.sh and configure may be
needed from time to time, and you can know that only after make fails.
Portability: scons > autotools
The same command work for linux, windows (cygwin, mingw, msvc),
solaris, but not tested under mac.
Maintainability: scons > autotools
Python is easier to read/write than m4, and you can use Python to do
all sort of things (regular expression, file system operations ...)
easily.
Distribution: scons < autotools
No 'make dist', 'make distcheck' yet. I can program those but the
features are already in a branch of scons/svn. I am told that they
will be there in scons 1.0. Anyway, scons can build windows installers
easily.
In summary, scons can almost replace autotools, but not now.
Bo
