[Gdal-dev] Visual Studio "Makefile" Project

[Simon Perkins]

Ivan Lucena wrote:
> Folks,
>
> A Visual Studio Project for GDAL is now available in the SVN repository.
>
> It is a "Makefile Project" that is set to make calls to "nmake -f makefiel.vc".
>
> The settings are:
>
> - Build Command Line is :      "cd apps && nmake -f makefile.vc"
> - Rebuild All Command Line is: "nmake -f makefile.vc"
> - Clean Command Line is        "nmake -f makefile.vc"
>   
I think that should be "nmake -f makefile.vc clean"...


I guess this project file is relatively harmless, but I wonder if we're 
putting too many different parallel build systems into the GDAL source 
tree. There are already unix makefiles, Visual Studio makefiles, WinCE 
projects files, and now this one. In addition, there are externally 
maintained VS 2003 project files to build GDAL directly. And of course 
if you run VS 2005 (hey, this is 2007 after all...), then these project 
files all have to be converted to the new VS 2005 to use them, and then 
changes can't be committed back to the repository. Apart from the 
aesthetically unpleasing clutter, there's all the effort that goes into 
maintaining these distinct build systems and keeping them in sync with 
the source code.

Possible alternatives to storing these multiple build systems in the 
main GDAL tree:

- Creating a contrib or extras directory in the GDAL main directory 
where people can feel free to add builds scripts (and whatever else) for 
as many different systems as they like.

- Creating a separate gdal-contrib SVN directory in parallel with gdal 
directory where extras can go.

- Putting the effort into getting a true general purpose build system in 
place such as cmake, which could then ultimately replace all the other 
build scripts.


Any thoughts?

Cheers,

Sy