[CMake] Eclipse CMake Generator - Pre-Alpha version

[Alexander Neundorf]

Hi Miguel,

On Tuesday 31 July 2007 00:22, Miguel A. Figueroa-Villanueva wrote:
> Hello Everyone,
>
> Recently there has been discussion on the list about the Eclipse IDE
> (or whatever it is; platform maybe ;) ) and CMake.
>
> http://www.cmake.org/pipermail/cmake/2007-July/015294.html
> http://www.cmake.org/pipermail/cmake/2007-July/015434.html
>
> So, I don't know much about Eclipse (i.e., I started using it last
> week) and very little about CMake Generator development, but I still
> gave it a shot at developing an Eclipse Generator. I have an
> implementation which I'm sure is missing many things and is in need of
> much refactoring, but I used it to compile, edit, and debug CMake
> source files (the actual generator stuff) with the project created by
> it for Eclipse.

Great ! :-)

> The rest of this message is divided into two parts. First, I'm
> requesting guidance and support from the community and the CMake
> developers, and the second one is just my points of views on the
> previous discussions about a CMake Plugin for Eclipse.
>
> Guidance and support:
> ================
>
> 1. Are the CMake developers interested in this (i.e., will they accept
> the patches)? If so, how should I coordinate this development. I don't

Yes.

> think patches through the bug tracker will be appropriate for this
> given the rate of change it is likely to have. Limited cvs access

I would suggest simply send the patches to this mailing list (and maybe CC 
me), I'll apply them as soon as they are somewhat working and don't break the 
CMake coding style.
It's basically the same as for VTK: 
http://www.vtk.org/Wiki/VTK_Coding_Standards

> would be best, or maybe through a wiki entry until it matures. Then
> the bug tracker would suffice.
>
> So far, I have modified only cmake.cxx to add the extra generator
> handle [this->AddExtraGenerator(...)], the CMakeLists.txt file to add
> the two new files, and the two new files themselves:
>
>   Source/cmExtraEclipseGenerator.cxx
>   Source/cmExtraEclipseGenerator.h

Sounds good.
Is this for CDT 4.0 or also earlier versions ?
I think the name should have some more details, like 
cmExtraEclipseCDT4Generator .

> 2. As I mentioned, I'm new to Eclipse so, I don't know how people use
> it. I need volunteers to test the generator and let me know what
> things don't work as expected. Basically, I'm "reverse engineering"
> the .project/.cproject files to create the generator. So, in many
> cases I just don't have examples of more complex scenarios.

You could consider joining the cdt-devel mailing list (should be somewhere on 
http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/CDT), it's a medium traffic list, but I 
can't find the link right now.

> Note that this is a simple generator (an extra generator), since it
> relies on the "Unix Makefiles" generator to handle all the difficult
> issues. So, I'm not looking to provide a generator for eclipse that

Yes, that's ok.

> will create a managedmakefile project; at least not at this point. I
> am looking to implement the Eclipse generator on top of the MinGW,
> MSYS, and maybe NMake (depending on the Eclipse CDT support for it).

Do you know if it is more work than "just" selecting a make parser for Eclipse 
to support the different makes ?

Bye
Alex