[CMake] cmake ruby bindings (or perl, or python, or ...)

Lloyd Hilaiel lloydh at yahoo-inc.com
Mon May 15 17:55:19 EDT 2006


(probably off topic)

The more and more I work with cmake, the more it feels like there are two
(or more) distinct tools rolled into one...

the "front end" is a piece of software that interprets CMakeLists.txt files,
and drives a "back end".  The back end is the stuff that actually generates
compiler specific project files (makefiles, whatever).

I'm wondering if anyone feels the same way?

Specifically I would be interested in using/writing a ruby front end for
writing my build files in.  This would give me powerful cross
platform constructs for interacting with the file system (FILE()),
list/set/hash manipulation, etc, and would give me a back end set of
calls to drive the build file generation.  The cost of course would be
(for me as a user) having to have both ruby and cmake installed.

The present front end seems like it will always be useful to keep
cmake a tight self contained piece of software...  My (very under
cooked) thoughts are that a code restructuring could take place that
would expose hooks into a generation engine that could then be exposed
to other languages (via SWIG, or manually, or whatever).  The existing
"front end" would use that code.  

Is anyone interested in this kinda thinking?  Is there any previous work
in this direction?

-- 
lloydh at yahoo-inc.com | too seriously don't a
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