[xorg] Re: CMake (was More about x-packages)

[Daniel Stone]

On Sat, Dec 22, 2007 at 11:05:42AM -0800, Alan W. Irwin wrote:
> Actually, I think you can state it stronger than that. If you insist on
> "convenience" libraries (unorganized collections of compiled objects that
> are not a real library), then CMake is not for you since from discussions on
> this subject on the CMake mailing list the CMake developers feel that
> convenience libraries are a build-system crutch that they do not want to
> support, and I agree with their stand on this.

X has a huge number of subsystems which need to be linked together.  I'm
also willing to bet that the number of files involved would exceed the
limits of some linkers.

> Analysis of the X specifics may indicate an obvious way to avoid using this
> crutch. For example, if large SO modules share extensive code as indicated
> above, isn't that a strong indication that you should make a real library
> out of that shared code?  Real libraries are stongly supported by CMake
> without any need for recompilation, and the end result is a lot easier to
> understand and maintain in my opinion.

Yes, real libraries are good, but they won't work for the X case due to
design that assumes everything's linked into the same final object, and
also due to the fact that they're, well, not real libraries.  We don't
make API guarantees for internals.

Cheers,
Daniel
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