[CMake] Wee question about CMake developer etiquette

[Brandon Van Every]

On Feb 10, 2008 10:54 PM, KHMan <keinhong at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Brandon's postings certainly gave me the impression
> that he was partly in charge in some manner.

As I said previously, I do not speak for CMake.  I understand why you
had the impression: I speak forcefully, I currently value CMake over
Lua, I spend too much time arguing the merits and demerits of build
systems rather than discussing Lua, I'm capable of zealously, and I
used the word "we" at least once to indicate that I am a part of the
CMake community.  I apologized for my zealousy, particularly with
respect to hobbyists, whose contributions to Open Source I have
undervalued.  None of this, however, makes me a Kitware developer, and
I have never claimed to be such.  You are very protective of your Lua
community.  You are also aware that I am not the only source of flames
in that community.  I think you need to accept that in an open source
culture, people will debate issues and they will disagree with each
other.  Sometimes in flaming fashion.

> Thus, someone who is
> under the impression that a CMake lead developer did jump into a
> public mailing list of another project and said the things he did,
> would be extremely concerned about whether the CMake project is
> led by good leaders or not.

For the record, Bill Hoffman is a political saint.  You could never
have a man with more diplomatic aplomb.

> Moreover, CMake is led by a company and is a project of
> which I have heard a lot of good things about so far, so this
> episode is even more unusual and shocking in that sense.

I do not know what the right strategy is for promoting CMake.  I am
not skilled at making people feel good about things, and I find
discussion of CMake vs. Premake vs. Bou very, very frustrating.
Premake and Bou are both Lua-based.  They eschew CMake, and they
eschew each other!  One of the ongoing conundrums of Open Source is
the duplication of work.  The most famous split is probably GNU Emacs
vs. XEmacs, it was very bitter.  It is probably premature to condemn
Premake and Bou as hopeless cases of Not Invented Here.  It is
probably better to look at them as experiments.  Lately I've been
trying to learn about such experiments, to see if they're smarter than
we (the CMake community) are.  I am encouraged that at least in some
Open Source communities, authors of similar tools sometimes do combine
efforts to make a better, single tool.  This has happened with JRake
and Raven, 2 build tools inspired by Ruby's "Rake" build tool.
http://offthelip.org/?p=44

> So Brandon explaining his behaviour with the phrase "I mean well"
> is immaterial.

It was your explanation, not mine.  I agreed with your explanation.  I
think your choice of words is material.  You have also sought to
explain me as "Machiavellian."  I acquiesced to that explanation in
order to bring peace.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every