[CMake] Adding a new language

[Michael Hertling]

On 11/16/2011 04:13 AM, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>>> I'd still like to know how to explain to cmake that the command produces
>>> 2 files, but at least I can get rid of my hack.
>> That (assuming just a simple object file is produced by compilation)
>> is one of several general limitations with CMake language support. For
>> example, my understanding is this issue has been taken care of for
>> Fortran 95 (where compilation produces both object and module files)
>> with Fortran-95 specific changes to the C++ cmake code.  But I would far
>> prefer to see a generic mechanism for this to not only to deal with
>> the Fortran 95 module issue, but also the compilation-generated Ada
>> library identification (*.ali) files, and also the similar issue for
>> OCaml compiler generated files that you have described.
> 
> Hmm...
> 
>> Because of this and other struggles I had trying to implement Ada
>> language support for CMake, I didn't even consider implementing CMake
>> language support for OCaml for the PLplot OCaml bindings.  Instead we
>> currently use (many!) custom commands and targets for that case, but
>> I would be happy to change to your CMake OCaml language support
>> if/when that works.
> 
> I'm trying to use CMake for a new project here.  This project (a new
> programming language, whose first implementation is in OCaml) is
> currently in the very first stages (I have barely more than the lexer
> written) and doesn't require anything sophisticated (there's only
> 1 OCaml file for now ;-).  So my "language support" is very primitive
> and rather than fight CMake, I'll probably just switch to something
> else :-(

In addition to custom commands/targets, as suggested meanwhile by Alan
and Bill, you might also use the diverse RULE_LAUNCH properties. These
allow to take arbitrary actions at build time, and you may grant them
access to the placeholders used in rule variables, like <SOURCE> and
<OBJECT>, so it should be well possible to address the OCaml-related
issues you have reported on. Search the ML's archive for examples of
these properties' usage. However, they are currently restricted to
Makefiles, but your CMAKE_OCaml_COMPILE_OBJECT rule is too, AFAIK.

Regards,

Michael