[CMake] A comment on bug resolution

[Richard Wackerbarth]

On Dec 15, 2010, at 8:34 AM, David Cole wrote:
> Having said all that, let me address your specific concern regarding
> the issue closed:

I don't question your motive in closing the issue.

> I agree that the underlying reason for the request is a valid thing to want,

> but the request expresses it poorly

So, IMHO, some notation, requesting clarification, or suggesting that it be re-filed as an enhancement request, would have been a more appropriate way to close the issue.

> Asking us to change something that's already in use in the real world
> (where changing it has real consequences for our existing user base)
> especially where there are multiple interpretations of what that thing
> means is not reasonable. (Again, in my opinion...)

In the interest of "backward compatibility", introducing new variables in the CMAKE_ namespace may be necessary.
And, after they are introduced, deprecating the existing ones (utilizing the policy mechanism) would be in order.

It is perhaps unclear if anyone is relying the "current" behavior in the case where it might be different, but changing names would address that issue as well as permitting names that better self-document the host/target distinction.

As an aside, from the perspective of naming concepts, I think that compiling for your own machine could be viewed as a special case of the cross-compilation case. As long as the target defaults to match the host when it is not otherwise specified, that should not cause trouble in the simple cases.