[CMake] CMake and Lua

[Bill Hoffman]

Brandon Van Every wrote:

> 
>>  Just suppose I am correct and it is
>>  not possible to write a good enough translator.  Would you then still
>>  advocate dropping the cmake language?
> 
> Of course not.  That's why I said the translator would have to prove
> itself for 2 years.
So, I guess I will wait until then, and you can prove me wrong...  Until 
then, can you give it a break?
> 
>>  I am not coming up with excuses
>>  here, I really really do believe that the translator idea is nonsense.
>>  How many times do I need to type it for you to understand that is what I
>>  believe?
> 
> Ok, at this point, I intellectually understand what you believe.  You
> haven't provided much evidence for your belief so far.  You've
> commented that general purpose language translation, such as Fortran
> to C, is exceedingly difficult.  That is true, but we're talking about
> converting CMake script, a trivial language.  You haven't provided an
> example of something that would be difficult to translate.  You agreed
> that nobody metaprograms CMake script, that that's crazy talk.
> 
Actually I pointed out that you did metaprogram in CMake (in a sarcastic 
way).  I thought it was a bad idea, but if you did it, there might be 
others.   I am sure there are several other issues that will come up as 
well.  I just don't have the time to think about it.

Here is one case you have not considered.  There exist some IDE projects 
that generate CMake code like KDevelop.  The translator would not help 
them at all as the CMake code is embedded in C++ or java.   There exist 
cmake code generators.  I guess you would say generate, then translate? 
  Sounds like a mess.
>>  You are not willing to accept that I have a different point of view.  A
>>  good enough translator is not possible.
> 
> You have provided no firm evidence for your point of view, so I will
> continue to challenge it.
You have provided no evidence that such a thing is possible.   Other 
than you claim that it will be simple.
> 
>> That is my position.  I am not
>>  talking about corner cases here.  I am thinking of real world projects
>>  like KDE/ParaView/SecondLife/VTK.  The thought of translating these
>>  large projects with a translator is not one I would appreciate being
>>  driven into by the CMake developers.
> 
> Estimating conservatively, I got 1/2 of the way there with Mozilla.
> Autoconf + GMake --> CMake is a much more difficult translation
> problem than CMake --> Lua.  I know what is possible.
> 
I have a gut feeling that you are wrong.  I have never seen a perfect 
translation from one language to another.  Can you give me an example of 
one that exists?  BTW, You have no idea if you were 1/2 there or not, 
because you quit.  You might only be 10% of the way there.  The last 10% 
often takes 90% of the time with software projects.  Unless you finish 
the mozilla translator and build mozilla we will never know.

-Bill