[CMake-Promote] creating a market for CMake skills

William A. Hoffman billlist at nycap.rr.com
Thu Feb 16 21:52:45 EST 2006


At 08:25 PM 2/16/2006, you wrote:
>"What problems will people pay money to have others solve them with CMake?"
>
>That's a question I'd like to see answered.  I have, for instance, just sunk about 4 months into my CMake learning curve.  I'm keeping my "Open Sores" habit going with a job that has nothing to do with computers, let alone CMake.  In the absence of money, I'm not sure such a business model is viable.  Seems like I can either say, ok, time to sink the learning curve into tools that people pay for... or else figure out how to make people pay for CMake skills.

I don't think there will be many jobs like that.  CMake can make a programmer's job easier, once
you write the cmake files for a project, you can build it anywhere.   However, if the only thing
you had to offer a company was CMake skills, I think it would be a small market.  I don't think I have
seen to many jobs posted for experts in "make", which is the most popular build tool around.  
I do think build tools are important, but they are not an end, but a means to an end.  I am sure
that CMake is being quietly and successfully used by many internal corporate software 
packages.  I know of a few, but it is always hard to tell how many with an open source project.
If you do a google search for CMake resume and CMake CV, some folks are starting to list it
as a skill.

>So I'm interested in your thoughts on that.  Particularly if you know anyone who got paid specifically to convert a project to CMake, that wasn't just an incidental duty or experiment as an employee.

Here is a job posting that mentions CMake skills:
http://www.ismrm.org/jobs/j02880.htm  However, it does want other skills as well.

>Now granted, I think better docs are a prerequisite to being taken seriously by a large audience.  I intend to put effort into that, ahead of other promotional priorities.  Also we'll really need the features and bugfixes of CMake 2.3 to advance the cause.  Nevertheless, I ask for people's thoughts on the $$$$$ matter because I do think it is important for growth.  Money focuses people.

But CMake does have book, active mailing list, Wiki, and automated documentation
for all commands and modules.  Some folks think the docs are good:

http://www.baus.net/archives/?page=3

I am sure there is room for improvement, and folks like Alex have really helped
out with new Wiki entries.  

>My instinct is that the primary target market is large Autoconf-based projects.  That is, projects with money attached to them.  I'm thinking "from scratch" projects are less viable, because they don't know they're in trouble yet.  Whereas lotsa people feel Autoconf pain.

If that project is interested in porting to windows and OSX, then the project would be interested.
If not, and they have something working, I don't think there will be much motivation.  In projects
like this the job of build system person usually is not singled out, the build system person
also codes for the project in some other way.  

-Bill 




More information about the CMake-Promote mailing list