[CMake] Developing an externally usable API for CMake

Brad King brad.king at kitware.com
Wed Aug 2 11:05:09 EDT 2006


Matt Rogers wrote:
> As suggested, I've copied most of CMake's code into the KDevelop 4 codebase 
> for use in the cmake integration. However, I'd really love to have an 
> external library of some sort that I can link against rather than having to 
> keep up with CMake's code. This leads to a few questions I have:
> 
> 1. Would the CMake developers be willing to provide guidance, accept patches, 
> etc. for such a thing? I would be more than willing to work on it, assign 
> copyright to Kitware, whatever is needed.
> 
> 2. Are there any specs the CMake folks would like me to follow? I have an idea 
> of what I want for KDevelop's purposes in the API. I'll share this a bit 
> later once I get that stuff off the other machine.

We don't want to maintain a public API for the internal implementation
of CMake.  Maintaining an application is much easier than maintaining a
library.  However we could consider having a private API specifically
for KDevelop itegration if you are willing to maintain it.

> Rationale:  CMake supporting KDevelop 3 with a generator is great. However, 
> for the level of integration that I want to provide between CMake and 
> KDevelop 4, I don't believe a generator will be able to do a good enough job. 
> That is the reason I'm pushing so hard for an API of some sort that I can use 
> to get information from the CMakeLists.txt files.

What kind of information do you need?  What is an example feature in
KDevelop that would intereact with CMakeLists.txt files?

-Brad


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