Re: Premake vs. CMake

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

On Feb 2, 2008 3:39 AM, Alexander Gladysh <agladysh@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Aside from emotions there is an economic reason. There is a limited
> amount of such information one can absorb at a given period of time.
> Usually projects are complicated enough for its developers information
> absorbing throughput to be filled to capacitiy. It is always better
> for the commercial project for its developers to spend time absorbing
> information related directly to the project itself than related to
> auxiliary build systems.

I understand the phenomenon; it is the general culture that "build
systems don't count" as part of the project.  The problem is probably
that no programming language includes a specification for its build
system, so the build is seen as something separate.  Yet if we were to
talk about how your OO hierarchy is organized, people would assume
that's an inherent part of the project that needs intelligence,
design, and maintenance.  People try to wing it with build systems and
avoid them, until the project gets large enough that they simply
can't.  Then they live in denial for awhile and cut off their fingers
some more.  Then they cry Uncle! and either put an employee on the job
or hire an outside consultant.  Perhaps I worry too much about small
build tools becoming competitors for CMake.  The reality may be that
small projects will never be all that serious about build systems,
because they don't need that much of a build system.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every