[webkit-dev] CMake as a build system?

[Patrick Roland Gansterer]

Hi,

Bradley Nelson:
> 1. Ability to incrementally transition on Windows. It took us about 6
>  months to switch fully to gyp. Previous attempts to move to scons had
>  taken a long time and failed, due to the requirement to transition while
>  in flight. For a substantial period of time, we had a hybrid of checked in
>  vcproj and gyp generated
CMake should be treated like a separate buildsystem like qmake or gyp during a 
possible switch.

> 2. Generation of a more 'normal' vcproj file. Gyp attempts, particularly on
> Windows, to generate vcprojs which resemble hand generated projects. It
> doesn't generate any Makefile type projects, but instead produces msvs
> Custom Build Steps and Custom Build Rules.
CMake generates some pre/post-project building steps to the vcprojs (or an 
additional project), where it runs a CMake script.
If you take a look in the current vcprojs you can't understand them more easy 
than compared to CMake IMHO.
Anyway: How often do you look at these settings? I use the IDE only for 
writing code and debugging. I do all my buildsystem changes directly in the 
CMake files. If i see the source files in the IDE I'm already happy. Do you 
have other requirements?

> 4. Strong notion of module public/private interface. Gyp allows targets to
> publish a set of direct_dependent_settings, specifying things like
> include_dirs, defines, platforms specific settings, etc. This means that
> when module A depends on module B, it automatically acquires the right
>  build settings without module A being filled with assumptions/knowledge of
>  exactly how module B is built. Additionally, all of the transitive
>  dependencies of module B are pulled in. This avoids their being a single
>  top level view of the project, rather each gyp file expresses knowledge
>  about its immediate neighbors. This keep local knowledge local. CMake
>  effectively has a large shared global namespace.
All dependencies are generated from CMake too (if declared correctly) and the 
"global namespace" isn't a real problem IMHO.

> 5. Cross platform generation. CMake is not able to generate all project
> files on all platforms. For example xcode projects cannot be generated from
> windows (cmake uses mac specific libraries to do project generation). This
> means that for instance generating a tarball containing pregenerated
> projects for all platforms is hard with Cmake (requires distribution to
> several machine types).
Is there any demand for such a feature? Why you can't distribute the CMake 
file only?


> 6. Gyp has rudimentary cross compile support. Currently we've added enough
> functionality to gyp to support x86 -> arm cross compiles. Last I checked
> this functionality wasn't present in cmake. (This occurred later).
Supported since 2.6: http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/CMake_Cross_Compiling.

- Patrick