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

[Bas Couwenberg]

On 2018-10-04 15:39, Daniel Baston wrote:
>> What you can do to make _me_ use cmake is providing the
>> UI and functionality I'm used to
> 
> The pieces I'm not sure about are "make dist" and "make distcheck."

autotools and cmake take the opposite approach to creating distribution 
archives.

autotools only includes the files it is configured to.

cmake includes everything in the source tree not explicitly excluded.

To support `make dist` with CMake you need to add a custom target:

  add_custom_target(dist COMMAND ${CMAKE_MAKE_PROGRAM} package_source)

And configure CPACK_SOURCE_IGNORE_FILES to exclude everything that 
should not end up in the archives.

For `make distcheck` you'll need to implement more custom targets.

NetCDF may be a source of inspiration:

  
https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/blob/master/cmake/modules/FindMakeDist.cmake

Kind Regards,

Bas