[CMake] Lua in a nutshell

[Brandon Van Every]

On Mon, Mar 3, 2008 at 5:11 PM, Fernando Cacciola
<fernando.cacciola at gmail.com> wrote:
> Brandon wrote:
>  >
>  > I am starting to wonder if the whole Lua thing is indeed a red
>  > herring, and what CMake really needs is the best possible website to
>  > document, tutorialize, and market CMake.  In other words, what we've
>  > got is fine; go sell it.
>  >
>  I have the feelling that I'd like to get into *this* discussion (not that
>  SCon's related one), but I'm a newcomer much too late to the party, so:
>  what's "the whole Lua thing" in a nutshell?

Nutshell: is it strategically a good idea to implement Lua support for
CMake?  In my opinion:

Pros:
- higher quality 3rd party documentation that the CMake community
needn't maintain.
- CMake gets a popularity boost from Lua, as it's a mainstream
accepted language.
- Lua's corner cases are more ironed out than CMake script.  3rd party
continues to iron them out.
- proof of concept has already been demonstrated and was relatively
easy to implement

Cons:
- although doable, it's extra work to support 2 languages
- without a comprehensive migration strategy, it would split the CMake community
- CMake script must be maintained indefinitely for a small percentage
of users no matter what the migration strategy
- too much programmability may cause people to treat CMake as more of
a library or build component, rather than a standard end user tool

Undecided:
- Do advanced programming constructs really matter?  OO?  A fool's
game / fad / waste of time?  Or is it a killer feature that will make
or break products in the future?

>  If it has something to do with the CMake scripting language, well, I for one
>  would love to drop it and use something else, like.... (don't get me started
>  on the wrong tail)

The archives contain abundant ink on this subject.  Well, bytes, whatever.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every