Re: build system alternatives (Was: Using vala in GNOME)

["Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen" <mikkel kamstrup gmail com>]

2008/6/30 Gustavo J. A. M. Carneiro <gjc inescporto pt>:
> On Mon, 2008-06-30 at 12:01 -0300, Johan Dahlin wrote:
>> Gustavo J. A. M. Carneiro wrote:
>> > On Mon, 2008-06-30 at 15:07 +0100, Alberto Ruiz wrote:
>> [..]
>>
>> >> Plus, CMake is getting more mature and stable and it already supports
>> >> VisualStudio and XCode project files conversion, lack of proper
>> >> extensibility being its only downside at the moment.
>> >
>> > Lack of extensibility, and use of another arcane custom made programming
>> > language (if we can call it that) for everything.
>> >
>> > No, CMake is not an answer.  It is not significantly better than
>> > autotools to justify a switch to it IMHO.
>>
>> CMake *is* considerably better. Xcode/VisualStudio are killer features which
>> alone would make a switch worth it.
>
> I disagree that Xcode/VisualStudio are killer features.  A powerful
> programming language and extensibility are way better features IMHO.
> Does a significant percentage of GNOME developers use any of these IDEs?
> Without such data you can't assert that those are killer features.
>
> For the case of Vala, I don't see how CMake handles it any better than
> autotools.
>
>>
>> Can we please start to organize ourselves and try to move forward with
>> switching to another build system?
>
> We can't switch to any single build system any more than we can switch
> to a single DVCS.  Or to a single programming language, for that matter!
> Different developers value different features.  Modern developers have
> to adapt to different environments.  I, for example, regularly program
> in C, C++, and Python.  I know how to use cvs, subversion, bazaar, git
> (poorly), and mercurial.  In particular I use subversion, bazaar, and
> mercurial very regularly, all at the same time, git not so much only
> because I didn't need to.  I can hack plain makefiles,
> autoconf/automake, waf, and scons.

And is this an acceptable barrier of entry to Gnome development?

Cheers,
Mikkel