[CMake] Why is Ninja generator disabled by default?

[Andreas Mohr]

Hi,

On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 10:40:03AM -0400, cmake-request at cmake.org wrote:
> From: David Cole <david.cole at kitware.com>
> I agree with Bill here -- we cannot turn it on by default until it works
> sufficiently for typical use cases.

So, what would be needed to turn CMake on by default?
'cause it does not "work sufficiently for typical use cases" :->
</asbestos_suit>


While there might be backwards compatibility reasons for only actually
having Ninja truly enabled once it truly works (after all after some years
certain user code may resort to merely checking whether the feature
is provided or not, rather than doing sufficiently precise checks
"well, in this CMake pre-beta it actually was still broken,
and 3 days later they fixed it"),
I cannot help but wonder whether this configuration (build-time disabling
rather than a slightly special way of runtime disabling)
is hindering progress a bit due to artificially limiting developer uptake.
OTOH people who tend to like playing with certain bleeding edge things (like me)
are actually able to enable it manually - it's just somewhat more
effort:

> For specialized use cases, if you know you want to turn it on, you can
> easily re-build a CMake of your own that has it enabled. Simply turn on the
> advanced cache option CMAKE_ENABLE_NINJA when configuring CMake.


Andreas Mohr