On Sat, Jan 9, 2010 at 7:28 PM, Jeff Horelick <[email protected]> wrote: > 2010/1/9 Yannick LM <[email protected]> > >> Hi, >> >> First of all, since it's my first message on this list, a few words >> about myself: >> >> I'm a French software engineer in a small company, I've use Arch from >> several years now, and CMake at work. >> (We produce a big piece of software written in C++ that must run on >> windows, linux and mac) >> I'm also a huge fan of the Python language. >> >> Also, a few words about cmake: >> >> Web page: http://www.cmake.org/ >> >> Typical workflow is: >> cd /path/to/source >> mkdir build >> cd build >> cmake .. >> ccmake . #optional, to change configuration >> make >> >> Pros : >> * Nothing gets generated anywhere but in source/build, so there's no >> need for "clean" rules and a .gitignore containing "build" is enough >> :) >> * It's widely used, so lots of stuff such as using gettext is easily done. >> * It's fast! (written in C++) >> >> Cons: >> * It has a ugly syntax >> * It lacks decent documentation: >> http://cmake.org/cmake/help/cmake-2-8-docs.html is all you've got. >> >> Back to the subject: one day I decided it would be great to see >> libalpm wrapped in Python (or Ruby, or whatever ...) >> It's quite easy done once you use swig, and swig is easy when you use >> cmake. >> >> So, I started hacking a few CMakeLists files. >> >> The result is in a "cmake" branch in >> git://sd-5791.dedibox.fr/prog/pacman.git >> >> (which I'll try to keep not too far from pacman's official master branch) >> >> Right now, here's what those files can do: >> * let the user choose a few variables such as CONFFILE, DBEXT, >> LOGFILE (using ccmake) >> * build libalpm and pacman >> * install some files. >> >> If you want, I could take care of everything that's still missing: >> documentation, >> translations, tests ... >> >> I don't have much spare time to spend on this, but there's no need to >> hurry, isn't it? >> >> Just let me know if you are interested or if you have any question on >> the subject. >> >> >> Cheers, >> >> Yannick LM >> >> > I personally think CMake is a bad idea to use for something like pacman. > It's a bit saner and easier to use, but it's HUGE (~24MB on disk) compared > to autotools (~4MB on disk) and to build CMake itself takes quite a while > (~20 minutes on a fairly decent 2.8GhZ Pentium 4 under no load). While I > dislike autotools, I think for critical system components, using CMake is > too heavy and a bit stupid. > >
I don't like autotools either but probably because I do not understand it. And I do not not other build systems either , so ... :) Just for reference, another alternative that was proposed some times ago : http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/pacman-dev/2008-June/006837.html
