[CMake] cmake community site

[Sebastien BARRE]

At 3/3/2008 03:34 PM, Matt Williams wrote:

>I'm looking to see what you guys on this list think about me starting up
>a 'cmake community' site, possibly featuring the following:

I think I agree with the other posters, this might be a little too 
soon. Thanks for your input though.
We are actually reworking a few of our websites at Kitware (see 
http://cdash.org/), maybe CMake is on the list.

>  - News about releases

We have this in the current website:
http://cmake.org/HTML/News.html
This needs to be updated, and probably put in the front page.

>  - News about projects' success stories etc.

This is something we usually put in the News page (see the KDE item), 
or in our newsletter.
Whenever we hear of one, this could definitely be on http://cmake.org

>  - Simple beginner's tutorials
>  - Tutorials about more specific tasks e.g. platform specific things (even
>    when this isn't necessarily cmake specific)

AFAIK the Wiki is a fine location, and the 
http://cmake.org/HTML/Documentation.html page links to some entry 
points in the Wiki.

>  - Discussion forums

We don't have such a forum, but do we need it besides the CMake Mailing List?
Not talking for all CMake developers here, but I'm not sure all of us 
would have the resources to follow both the mailing list and the forums.

>  - A repository of Find*.cmake files including the ability to 
> provide feedback
>    to the module writer, such as improvements/patches
>  - A repository of extra macros providing the same as the Find*.cmake
>    repository

OK this one is tricky and has been debated internally in the past. 
There are maintenance concerns here. We are strongly committed to 
software quality at Kitware (not just for CMake), and that involves 
compiling and *testing* our code automatically on as many platforms 
as possible, every night 
(http://public.kitware.com/dashboard.php?name=cmake). If it is not 
tested, well, it is buggy (and if it's not buggy, it is soon going to 
be out of sync). Now it is already difficult to test all the modules 
that are in the CVS currently; they are usually exercised by our 
other internal projects when they invoke those modules during their 
own nightly regression tests. CMake is trying hard to be backward 
compatible but some modules also rely on the state of the given 
third-party tool or library they are trying to "enable": those 
modules need to be updated to follow the progresses of both CMake and 
said third-party tool. Now if you were to store modules in an 
external repository, I'm pretty confident by experience that without 
proper testing and maintenance, they would soon become unusable. It 
would be a concern if the community was to download those modules, 
find out they don't work, and blame CMake for it.