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

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2007-12-22 20:44-0000 José Fonseca wrote:

> On 12/22/07, Alan W. Irwin <irwin at beluga.phys.uvic.ca> 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.
>
> I don't think they have that they have that stand at all. Check Bill
> Hoffman note on the bottom of
> http://www.cmake.org/Bug/view.php?id=5155 , It is a technically
> difficult problem but there are legitimate use cases. I think DRI
> drivers, or drivers in general, is one of them.

Thanks for that link, Joe.  I stand corrected on the "attitude" issue.  But
it is also pretty clear from that link that Bill (the chief CMake developer
for others following this thread) gave up on the CMake convenience library
implementation and no other CMake developer has taken this issue on yet.

Thus, I believe the only practical way to use CMake for the indefinite
future is to wean yourself from convenience libraries by, e.g., replacing
them with real libraries.

By the way, convenience libraries are not a necessity for drivers in general
(if by that term above you meant a dynamically loaded shared object). For
example, PLplot has no convenience libraries, but we have plenty of
dynamically loaded plotting device drivers which link to all sorts of real
libraries (some built by PLplot some external).

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of
Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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