Re: Autotools and CMake

[Wookey]

+++ Warren Young [2014-12-26 18:46 -0700]:

> The thing about CMake is that its generated Makefiles contain cmake calls, so 
> they’re not independent of CMake, as Automake-generated Makefiles are 
> independent of Automake.  Therefore, if you ship CMake-generated Makefiles 
> with your distribution tarballs, you create two problems:
> 
> 1. Those building from the distribution tarball still need cmake.
> 
> 2. If the timestamps don’t force a re-generation of the Makefiles, they will 
> only work on systems that are substantially similar to the one the 
> distribution tarball was created on.

Exactly. cmake is designed to be run on/for the host system at build
time, which is a fundamental difference from autotools which are
designed to be run at release time on any machine to generate stuff which
can be run at build time on/for the host.

So cmake is always a build-time dependency of a cmake-using package.

> Better, in the end, to simply make cmake a build prereq for all users.
> 
> Therefore, I’d add a check for the existence of CMake on the build system to 
> configure.ac, followed immediately by something like 
> 
>     mkdir -p build ; cd build ; cmake ..

Right.
 
Wookey
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