Re: Premake vs. CMake

[Bradley Smith <gmane@...>]

Brandon Van Every wrote:
> Usually when I see the "we prefer premake" sentiment, or some
> such for another build tool, it's a small project.

I'm one of those people who prefer premake. I'm project leader on 127K 
lines of C++ code, 312K with generated code. Whatever size project that is.

> I've been
> interested in what advantages these tools offer, whether for small
> projects, or otherwise.  I'm also interested in people's perceptions
> about the advantages, and how that squares with design, maintenance,
> and scale-up over the long haul.  For instance, many people are of the
> opinion that a mainstream programming language is beneficial to a
> build system.

I agree with the opinion that a mainstream language is beneficial to the 
build system (especially Lua). Lua has a great balance of power and 
simplicity, and is well documented and easy to learn.

> Have you seen that actually pay off for you in some
> tangible way?

Yes. We use Lua not only with premake, but also in custom build scripts 
(packaging for distribution, code generation, license key creation) and 
in embedded testing and scripting of the application.

> Or was it about comfort level, feeling that you didn't
> have to learn something new, and it didn't turn out to matter in
> practice?

Learning something new isn't about discomfort. It is about cost versus 
benefit. If the new knowledge can be used in many ways, the benefit 
outweighs the cost. On the other hand, if the new knowledge can only be 
used to build the project, the cost may outweigh the benefit.

Knowledge used in multiple places could be called "Knowledge Reuse". 
Since Lua is easily used in different ways, it can also be beneficial 
for direct "Code Reuse". Some of our code for configuring premake is 
reused in other build scripts.

If CMake used Lua, I'd be more likely to use CMake.

  Bradley