[CMake-Promote] simplified vs. fullblown languages

[Brandon Van Every]

On Jan 31, 2008 5:47 PM, Andrew Manson <g.real.ate at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This is very true for small projects but it also raises a question for
> people who are not familiar with any build system. I'm a college student
> in a pretty good college ( over all ) but i have never been exposed to
> any of the ideas behind a "good" build system. If you can convince
> someone like me, being a blank canvas, with reasonable ease to use cmake
> then you should be able to convince someone who is only looking to
> maintain a small project. Neither of us know about cmake and need to be
> thought about it from the bottom up, not comparing it to other build
> systems. This is why i want the book, presuming that it can teach me
> what i need to know. And i also think that this was the problem with the
> maintainer who chose not to use cmake, he wanted something that was
> built in a language that he knew instead of looking at the merits of
> cmake for what it is ( which includes the simplicity of its syntax ). so
> my thoughts would be to forget anything you know when looking at cmake
> with the goal of learning it, and only compare it to any other system
> when you are proficient enough to maintain a reasonable sized system
> with it.

I think you're right about what the newbie needs to hear.

I've concluded that for small projects, the choice of build system
really doesn't matter, if it accomplishes basic goals like being
cross-platform.  There isn't any special advantage to Lua or any other
mainstream language, as a small project simply doesn't need much done.
 Thus for small projects, CMake vs. anything else is almost a pure
marketing problem.  I say "almost" because I don't think CMake's
shipping documentation is newbie friendly.  I suppose I'll buy the
CMake book when it's available, to see how good a job it does of
addressing a newbie's needs, and what it doesn't do if anything.

My jury is out on the benefits of mainstream fullblown languages for
large projects.  I'd need to see some examples of that.  I'm sure it
won't be written in Premake.  Anyone have any idea what the largest
open source SCons project might be?


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every