Everything You Never Wanted to Know About CMake
1–10 of 91 posts
Re: Everything You Never Wanted to Know About CMake
#2I want to upvote this for solid info, but I want to flag it so fewer people have to know about CMake. It blows my mind that experienced software developers would develop yet another pseudo-language DSL vs creating a portable library (python, java, go, whatever) that has a sensible interface.
Re: Everything You Never Wanted to Know About CMake
#3Every day I bitterly regret that they decided not to use Tcl for CMake in the end.
Re: Everything You Never Wanted to Know About CMake
#4I want to upvote this for solid info, but I want to flag it so fewer people have to know about CMake. It blows my mind that experienced software developers would develop yet another pseudo-language DSL vs creating a portable library (python, java, go, whatever) that has a sensible interface.
CMake is very powerful but unlike most things there’s no underlying principle or theory that when you grasp it, everything just clicks, and you also can transfer the knowledge to other languages. It’s just a matter of memorising lots of tricks and special cases.
Re: Everything You Never Wanted to Know About CMake
#5I want to upvote this for solid info, but I want to flag it so fewer people have to know about CMake. It blows my mind that experienced software developers would develop yet another pseudo-language DSL vs creating a portable library (python, java, go, whatever) that has a sensible interface.
I'm not sure what you mean. If for whatever reason I need to set up a big C/C++ application so that it can compile on diverse systems, CMake is one of my best bets for getting that to happen. If anyone would like to suggest a better option I would gladly switch, but as it stands I think CMake is pretty useful to know about.
Re: Everything You Never Wanted to Know About CMake
#6I want to upvote this for solid info, but I want to flag it so fewer people have to know about CMake. It blows my mind that experienced software developers would develop yet another pseudo-language DSL vs creating a portable library (python, java, go, whatever) that has a sensible interface.
Scons came to prominence around the same time as CMake and took that approach, but seems to have been less popular.
Re: Everything You Never Wanted to Know About CMake
#7I want to upvote this for solid info, but I want to flag it so fewer people have to know about CMake. It blows my mind that experienced software developers would develop yet another pseudo-language DSL vs creating a portable library (python, java, go, whatever) that has a sensible interface.
I'm not sure what you mean. If for whatever reason I need to set up a big C/C++ application so that it can compile on diverse systems, CMake is one of my best bets for getting that to happen. If anyone would like to suggest a better option I would gladly switch, but as it stands I think CMake is pretty useful to know about.
I think the op's point is that it was not necessary to invent a new programming language for this. You could write a library for existing languages (probably with a custom entry point) that does the same thing, but without a new and confusing syntax.
Re: Everything You Never Wanted to Know About CMake
#8I want to upvote this for solid info, but I want to flag it so fewer people have to know about CMake. It blows my mind that experienced software developers would develop yet another pseudo-language DSL vs creating a portable library (python, java, go, whatever) that has a sensible interface.
Creating your own build tools becomes unmaintainable by anyone else. People do it all the time, and pay the price when they have to change their builds. There is a reason CMake is used by a lot of projects, it's not somehow due to everyones incompetance.
Re: Everything You Never Wanted to Know About CMake
#9I want to upvote this for solid info, but I want to flag it so fewer people have to know about CMake. It blows my mind that experienced software developers would develop yet another pseudo-language DSL vs creating a portable library (python, java, go, whatever) that has a sensible interface.
I'm not sure what you mean. If for whatever reason I need to set up a big C/C++ application so that it can compile on diverse systems, CMake is one of my best bets for getting that to happen. If anyone would like to suggest a better option I would gladly switch, but as it stands I think CMake is pretty useful to know about.
Bazel works very well for C++ applicatios.
Cross platform builds are well supported.
Re: Everything You Never Wanted to Know About CMake
#10I want to upvote this for solid info, but I want to flag it so fewer people have to know about CMake. It blows my mind that experienced software developers would develop yet another pseudo-language DSL vs creating a portable library (python, java, go, whatever) that has a sensible interface.
I'm not sure what you mean. If for whatever reason I need to set up a big C/C++ application so that it can compile on diverse systems, CMake is one of my best bets for getting that to happen. If anyone would like to suggest a better option I would gladly switch, but as it stands I think CMake is pretty useful to know about.
I'm not arguing that it doesn't do what it was designed to do. I'm arguing that it is a grotesque DSL with bizarre design choices. CMake would have been better off as a cross-platform library that didn't re-invent concepts that other programming languages have already gotten correct, and instead focused on making the build system be cross-platform.