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Ray Tracing in pure CMake

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Re: Ray Tracing in pure CMake

#21

Post by MaxBarraclough »

knorker wrote: post #19

Well well well, we finally found something CMake can actually do. Please, everyone, stop using CMake. It doesn't do its one job.

I agree that CMake is pretty awful, [0] but I'm not convinced that we'd be better off using its immature competitors, especially considering the fragmentation that would bring.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24203172

Re: Ray Tracing in pure CMake

#22

Post by mxcrossb »

knorker wrote: post #19

Well well well, we finally found something CMake can actually do. Please, everyone, stop using CMake. It doesn't do its one job.

I absolutely despise cmake. But autotools is even worse, so it’s what I end up using. I haven’t found another approach which handles my needs.

Re: Ray Tracing in pure CMake

#23

Post by unnouinceput »

I remember writing a ray tracing in 1994 in Turbo Pascal 7.0 running on 286 under DOS 4.0 at the time. I did it with floating numbers, pure mathematical implementation. When it came to usability was something like 1 frame every 30 seconds for resolution of 640x480 with 256 colors only.

The problem with ray tracing isn't writing one, the problem is its usability, to get the most realistic AND fast enough. Mine was very realistic for that resolution but the snail FPS was something unbearable. Despite my best efforts at the time, hardware was not ready. I remember the talk between us (prof. assistant, basically a master student and rest of wanna be programmers) and we're so sure it would take maximum 5 years for ray tracing and photo-realism to become every day commodity. We were wrong only by 20 years. Good times.

Re: Ray Tracing in pure CMake

#25

Post by asddubs »

knorker wrote: post #19

Well well well, we finally found something CMake can actually do. Please, everyone, stop using CMake. It doesn't do its one job.

I'll agree CMake is pretty rough to get into, but what makes you say it doesn't do it's one job?

Re: Ray Tracing in pure CMake

#27

Post by bluGill »

skohan wrote: post #20
knorker wrote: post #19

Well well well, we finally found something CMake can actually do. Please, everyone, stop using CMake. It doesn't do its one job.

What's wrong with CMake?

The syntax is weird and inconsistent. Built ins are case insensitive, but user defined functions are sensitive. No way to return values from functions, except by jumping to the scope of the caller and changing its variables unexpectedly. (Better hope you know what the caller does)

That isn't a complete list .

Despite the above cmake is your best choice of build system for C. Though some competitors could overtake it.

Re: Ray Tracing in pure CMake

#29

Post by mkl95 »

knorker wrote: post #19

Well well well, we finally found something CMake can actually do. Please, everyone, stop using CMake. It doesn't do its one job.

I have mixed feelings about CMake. Non trivial scripts look like an spaghetti ball, but it's an extremely powerful spaghetti ball.

Re: Ray Tracing in pure CMake

#30

Post by TheRealSteel »

fouronnes3 wrote: post #28

CMake is by far the worst language I have ever worked in.

Oh thank god, this thread is making me feel much better about myself.

I've been trying to integrate OpenCV's C++ library with my own C++ code (not involving Python), with the additional contrib modules (meaning I have to compile OpenCV myself), for multiple platforms, and I got stuck on CMake for so long it made me question if I was just a total idiot and should give up on programming forever.

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