[CMake] Re: IDE directly supporting CMakeLists.txt?

wedekind wedekind at caesar.de
Wed Feb 7 04:20:45 EST 2007


Hello all,

thanks for your thoughts and hints. I guess I can sum up for me now that at
the moment there is no IDE that directly supports CMakeLists.txt files. And
there are reasons for that. Nevertheless I think it would enhance CMake's
usability in IDEs greatly if they would offer such a support. (At least for
me lazy GUI-user...)

So I am looking forward to see the CMake-support in KDevelop 4. And seeing
kdevelop on a windows desktop :)

@Alex: I'm totally with you, when you say you wouldn't try to squeeze
CMake's expressive power into a GUI. The main intention for me to see a
better support of CMakeLists.txt in an IDE is that I want to see the changes
made to a CMakeLists.txt file immediately in the IDE. E.g. if I add a file
to the CMakeLists.txt-file it should be added immediately to the file-list
in the IDE too. Otherwise I would have to "build" the project first to
update the IDE's view of the project from the CMake files. I guess the IDE
would have to actively monitor its CMakeLists.txt files then to instantly
update its view of the project. This is the essence of what I mean by
"direct support of CMakeLists.txt by an IDE". IMO it would avoid an
unintuitive workflow when using CMake with an IDE.

So maybe a "hybrid" approach would do. On the one hand an IDE should
actively monitor changes on CMakeLists.txt files and update itself
accordingly (maybe calling cmake on them afterwards without unnerving
message boxes or other useless interaction). On the other hand some simple
GUI could be used to change "key=value"-options, like ccmake or CMakeSetup
does at the moment.

Cheers

Marco




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