Re: Premake vs. CMake

["Brandon Van Every" <bvanevery@...>]

On Feb 2, 2008 6:32 AM, Gregg Reynolds <dev@mobileink.com> wrote:
> On 2/1/08, Brandon Van Every <bvanevery@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Yeah but do you really believe that as a build tool, premake is of the
> > same industrial quality as CMake?  CMake has probably 2 orders of
> > magnitude more development resources going into it.  So the Lua in
>
> I wonder what happens when those resources go away.

Why would they?  In addition to a strongly growing open source
community, CMake has Kitware behind it.  Kitware makes its big money
on scientific visualization for clients like the oil and gas industry.
 They're not going anywhere.  CMake was produced as a byproduct of
their deployment needs and some NSF grants with some other parties.
I'm  actually not aware of any realistic competitor in the C/C++ world
at this time.  In the Java and C# worlds, that's another matter, but
for C/C++ CMake is the best of the bunch.  It's certainly not Autoconf
/ Automake, most people hate them and they don't support MSVC.  CMake
also supports a larger variety of native build systems than Autoconf /
Automake do.

>  The CMake source looks much more monolithic

Most people consider integration of build functionalities into 1
package to be an advantage.  Spreading things out over Autoconf,
Automake, m4, and libtool is a PITA.

> and about as complicated as autoconf to  me.

You get what you pay for.  CMake handles large projects.

>  A lua-based tool would presumably have the
> advantage of simplicity.  Not to mention portability.

CMake has no portability problem.

> Having to ship CMake
> with one's project seems like a major drawback to me,

It is hardly a "major" drawback, and personally I consider it whining.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every