[CMake] CMake and Lua

[Brandon Van Every]

On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 7:08 PM, Brandon Van Every <bvanevery at gmail.com> wrote:
>   Especially in open source, I think it is
>   reasonable to make developers do trivial amounts of work to move on,
>   at some point, if the migration tools have been thoroughly tested and
>   proven in the field.

I did just realize one "gotcha" however that I hadn't previously
considered.  *Which* version of CMake would be translated?  Writing a
translator for 1 or even a few recent versions of CMake is one thing.
Trying to be bug-for-bug compatible over the entire history of CMake's
development is quite another.  There would have to be some cutoff
point, where if you want compatibility with a really ancient version
of CMake, you have to just use an old version of CMake, and not expect
new features or ongoing development.

Then again, if translation was proven for CMake 2.4.x forwards, for a
goodly number of years, and officially supported, then it could pave
the way for translation efforts even farther back into CMake's
history.  Say, for instance, 80% of the builds out there are
translatable because they're sufficiently modern.  20% aren't, and it
takes a much longer time to make them translatable.  So, it may still
be possible, but 2 years wouldn't be long enough to force migrations.
More like 5..10 years.  On that timescale, it's not that different
from supporting 2 languages indefinitely.  Even if the support can
indeed be terminated in 10 years, it's a lot of time to be splitting
the community with 2 languages.

It really all depends on how far back the CMake compatibility has to go.

A far more likely scenario is, CMake --> Lua translators are used to
get 99% of the CMake community onto Lua.  The remaining 1% contract
with Kitware for their special needs.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every