[geos-devel] RFC7 - Use CMake as build system for GEOS

[Sandro Santilli]

On Wed, Oct 03, 2018 at 02:14:32PM -0400, Greg Troxel wrote:
> Sandro Santilli <strk at kbt.io> writes:
> > On Mon, Oct 01, 2018 at 12:38:50PM -0400, Daniel Baston wrote:
> >> 
> >> https://trac.osgeo.org/geos/wiki/RFC7
> >
> > One of the reasons why I still prefer autotools is its ability
> > to build tester scripts which work before install (via libtool).
> > Does cmake allow for that ?
> 
> Testing before install, while the previous version (including libraries)
> is installed, is to me a requirement for a build system.  Also cross
> building.  People keep telling me that cmake does everything auto* does,
> but I wonder.
> 
> Perhaps we can drop camke and just have autotools, and native windows
> (vs mingw/cygwin) users can fund keeping the separate windows makefiles
> up to date (yes, that's mostly a joke).

The current situation is really that CMake is a contributed module and
the official build tool _is_ autotools. The problem reported in that
RFC7 is not well-posed in that it assumes contributors are _required_
to support multiple build systems. Truth is they only need to support
autotools, but are convinced CMake is enough because they find the
CMake support in there. If we drop CMake support, they won't bother.

How problematic would that be for contributors ?

--strk;