[CMake] Call for Module maintainer volunteers

[Brandon Van Every]

On 7/26/07, Alan W. Irwin <irwin at beluga.phys.uvic.ca> wrote:
> On 2007-07-26 12:32-0400 Brandon Van Every wrote:
> >
> > So why will the experimental testing method be widely used?  And when
> > it is used, why will people report their results?
>
> This is standard fare in most free software releases these days. To name
> just a few major projects off the top of my head, the Linux kernel, Debian,
> KDE, and GNOME projects do this,

These have a critical mass of tweakerheads that CMake does not have.
People who think it's important to recompile their kernel and their
libraries for their specific CPU and so forth.

> and there are huge numbers of minor
> projects (such as PLplot) that do this as well.

That would be more comparable to CMake's current popularity and scope.

> The way this works is a given software package puts out a testing release,
> and the cutting-edge types who are attracted by the new features in the test
> release, test it, report bugs, etc.  Most software users are not
> cutting-edge types and don't bother with testing releases and apparently you
> are part of that majority. :-)

You can reasonably expect a build system engineer to value stability
over the bleeding edge.  I wager you'll find that true of people in
the CMake community.

> Nevertheless, the testing release model
> normally works well because there are a substantial minority that do like to
> be cutting edge.  For example, with PLplot our testing releases have
> substantial popularity judging by their download rate statistics, and we do
> get valuable feedback from such early-adopter users.  Since we value that
> feedback we make it extremely easy for users to try testing distributions of
> PLplot, and I call on KitWare to do the same with the modules.

I see a difference: PLplot is an end product, not an underlying
configuration tool affecting many applications and libraries.  Who
tweaks Autoconf?  Perhaps a survey of the release methodologies of
other major configuration tools is in order, i.e. Ant, SCons.

I think it is very important that any experimental releases have no
effect on official CMake installations at all.  The end user should
have to make a conscious choice to allow experimental stuff to
operate.   Configuration options of the form
USE_EXPERIMENTAL_MODULE_MODULENAME might do the trick.  They'd be OFF
by default.  Of course, this is a fairly conservative approach and
will keep the testing from being widespread.  But I think for a build
system, conservative has to be the official default.  Otherwise
CMake's reputation for building things reliably is jeopardized.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every