[webkit-dev] CMake for Apple's Windows port

[Patrick Gansterer]

Hi,

it's more than a year since the last discussion about the build system of Apple's Windows port. In the meantime I merged most of the general changes into the CMake files in the repository and have a working patch with a few CMake files at [1] as written in [2]. I don't think that it is ready to replace the existing vcproj files already, but I like to hear all points needed to do that.
Adding CMake files for the WinCairo port (which uses the vcproj files too) will be very easy when the Apple version has been added.

Here some benefits to the CMake version:
1) Shared build system: The shared files are already used by the Blackberry, EFL and WinCE port, so only the list of platform specific files needs to be maintained.
2) No dependency on cygwin [3]: The CMake build system searches for the Win32 version of the required executables (bison, gperf, flex, perl and python) like the WinCE port does already (see [4]).
3) Less Solution targets: Some of he current vcproj files only used for triggering Makefiles. The vcproj generates more native vcproj files, which e.g. allows clicking on one of the IDL files to generate the corresponding files.
4) Easy creation of Visual Studio 2010 project files [5]: Using CMake allows an easy transition to other (newer) Visual Studio versions, since every developer can choose his preferred version.
5) It's possibe to create Makefiles: The output of the windows buildbots shows much unwanted messages. Using Makefiles on the bots can produce cleaner logs and take advantage of all cores when used with JOM [7].

Would be great if people who use the current VS Solution can give the CMake version a try and provide some feedback about it.

BTW: There is also a patch to switch Wx to CMake at [8], but it did not get a positive response.

[1] https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=72816
[2] https://lists.webkit.org/pipermail/webkit-dev/2011-February/015831.html
[3] https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48166
[4] http://trac.webkit.org/wiki/WinCE#Build
[5] https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=53445
[6] https://lists.webkit.org/pipermail/webkit-dev/2011-January/015815.html
[7] http://qt-project.org/wiki/jom
[8] https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=73100

-- Patrick