[CMake] The CMake build system for PLplot is now essentially complete

[Alan W. Irwin]

I am happy to report that the PLplot developers have essentially completed
their new CMake Build System (CBS), and everybody who has tried it likes it
very much compared to our old Autotools Build System (ABS).  Just like the
article about the KDE switch to CMake promised, the CMake syntax is easy for
our developers to understand and maintain, the results are fast, and unlike
our ABS we can use our CBS to build PLplot on windows.

The current status is we are building the complete PLplot on Linux with our
CBS.  That consists of a core C library, many plugins for various plot
devices that are dynamically loaded by that core library, many language
interfaces (some of them swig generated) to the core C library, many
examples to be used for ctest results, and a complete docbook-based document
build.  Our success on other platforms such as Mac OS X and windows is more
limited than for Linux, but it is early days yet, and I think it is only a
matter of time until we figure out how to refine our CBS so that we can
also build full-featured PLplot on those platforms.

Earlier today I complained a bit about the lack of "elseif" in CMake, and a
default write to the source tree with FILE(WRITE...).  Also, there are 
well-known CMake troubles with fortran support (we have both fortran 77 and
fortran 95 interfaces to the core C library) that I would like to see
straightened out so we don't have to do some ridiculous fortran workarounds
I have mentioned before on list and in bug reports.

However, I would like to emphasize that despite those problems, CMake has
been an extremely positive experience for the PLplot developers, and I would
like to publicly thank the CMake developers for all their hard work at
making such a nice build system publicly available.  Also, I would like to
thank those that have patiently answered all my CMake questions on this
list.  You guys have been a great help, and we have a pretty nice CMake
build system for PLplot as a result that does everything that we need
on Linux and should soon do the same on Mac OS X and windows as well.

Alan
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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 Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net); 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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