[CMake] Removing cmake as a dependancy

[Kevin Tucker]

My company is Birdstep Technology, formerly Raima Corporation
(http://www.birdstep.com/database) and the SDKs we create are embedded
databases.  One of our strengths is our support of many different
platforms from Windows to the multiplicity of unix distros.  We've been
dealing with a hodge-podge of make systems to support these different
environments, especially between Windows and the unix's and really want
to find something we can standardize on!

We've been sending out our binaries with example code which had project
files build for Windows.  That was always a problem as different
customers have different versions of Microsoft's compilers, so we'd
tried including copies of project files for multiple versions or
including only the earliest version so that it could be upgraded, and
other things, but they have all been painful both for the customers and
for us to maintain.

So, with CMake able to easily generate a project file or nmake files, or
whatever, it would be a huge benefit for us in our maintenance of this.

However, there has been some push-back about requiring the customers to
have cmake installed.  Especially if we expect them to just install our
product and then start compiling the examples to evaluate the product,
we want there to be as few steps they need to take to get things working
as possible.

At this point, our best bet may be to just bundle cmake in with our
product install to ensure that customers have the easiest possible
experience.

Kevin


-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Hoffman [mailto:bill.hoffman at kitware.com] 
Sent: Friday, February 29, 2008 12:48 PM
To: Kevin Tucker
Subject: Re: [CMake] Removing cmake as a dependancy

Kevin Tucker wrote:
> Thanks Philip,
> 
>  
> 
> I hadn't noticed the absolute paths yet.  I can see that they would
make 
> portability without cmake a problem.  
> 
>  
> 
> Is there any problem with including the cmake installer inside other 
> products?
> 
>

Just curious, what types of products are you talking about?

-Bill