2017-12-03 1:20 GMT+01:00 Stefan Seefeld via Boost
On 02.12.2017 19:12, Domen Vrankar via Boost wrote:
And as I said as a front end it doesn't really add anything worth mentioning - just puts a different make up on it.
Domen,
no need to defend CMake. If you like it, by all means, keep using it. I have described at length what I think is wrong with CMake, and I know lots of people who agree with me (even if they don't think that Faber is the solution to those problems). I don't intend to convince CMake lovers to switch away from their tool of choice, but I do offer something for those who need a portable build system but aren't satisfied with either CMake or b2.
From Boost I always used the libraries as I didn't have good alternatives. It uses b2 so I even thought about using it instead of CMake for my own
You misunderstand me. I'm not defending CMake. Quite frankly I wouldn't care if at the point in time CMake was created and started getting popular Faber would be created instead and CMake would be presented here now - I would "defend" Faber in that case. What I am defending/am against is the idea of creating alternatives without a large benefit (that's how I see Java compared to C++ all this years... development landscape fragmentation instead of improving existing in a compatible way). Every alternative that I stumble across makes my life harder so I really like the alternatives only when they are really meaningful and not just a matter of taste. At work I'm using CMake. A few weeks ago I had to decide between Botan and Cryptopp library and first I saw Botans "C++11 library" advertisement so I thought I'd give it a try first. Then I saw it has a non CMake build system and got the "python not found" error message... So I downloaded Cryptopp, saw the CMakeLists.txt file, ran the build and noticed that target importing doesn't work - I found out that CMake is community supported but didn't have a problem fixing it and decided that I'll probably contribute a fix once I have the time. After that I just deleted Botan as I knew that both can do what I need. Creating a new build system without a real advantage that couldn't be fairly easily added to an already existing (meta) build system is from where I stand just another obstacle which I'll have to learn to avoid without getting anything more in return than I'd get if the author would have used a common solution instead. projects (that was 5 years ago if I remember correctly). Then I skimmed through the documentation and decided against it - I figured out that it'd be harder to explain to others than CMake and wouldn't make my life easier as we still used some libraries that were CMake based. So since I just had to compile it for AIX and had the instructions/patches from IBMs site I just built it and was OK with that. I would have liked if b2 would create CMake import files and that would be it. Since b2 didn't get enough popularity outside Boost and CMake already provides a find package script for it it didn't change much for me anyway. When the "Boost moving to CMake" announcement came I just thought to myself "Interesting. I hope that now they'll finally provide a target import file for CMake" and that was it. But creating a new build system that could potentially become more popular and really fragment my workflow is a completely different thing - and that's what I'm against... I'm a bit afraid that what b2 didn't manage cause Faber would. Regards, Domen