On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 5:05 PM, Douglas Huff <dhuff@jrbobdobbs.org> wrote:

Cmake is just as bad as autotools, just with a different syntax and more "buzz" behind it right this second. I don't see any advantage to it over autotools unless you're not familiar with either and even then I wouldn't really call it an advantage. It's just different.

So, what about native build script generation for other platforms? autotools can only generate makefiles (with at least two intermediate code generation steps), which is quite limited.

IMO cmake is simple and elegant compared to the autotools monster. I don't see why it would be "just as bad". And I have quite some experience with both systems. Autotools is a hell to debug. cmake certainly isn't perfect, but at least it's a leap forward.

It also requires a dependency that isn't installed by default anywhere, as already mentioned, and is less known outside of some obscure qt/kde circles and so finding people who are familiar with it and are willing to maintain it is more difficult.

Yes, apart from that only obscure projects such as LLVM, Blender, and OpenCV are using it. Nothing of any importance.

BTW for cmake there is "ccmake" which is even better than configure --help as it offers an interactive interface for configuration.

JS