[CMake] CPack 101

[Mike McQuaid]

On 23 December 2010 12:43, David Cole <david.cole at kitware.com> wrote:
> Neither do we:
> http://public.kitware.com/Bug/view.php?id=10067

> As always, as developers we find ourselves constantly working to improve
> what we have: fixing bugs, implementing new features, answering questions on
> the mailing list, blogging/communicating about it, adding examples and
> suggestions to the Wiki.
>
> The struggle is reserving enough time to contribute to documentation when
> there are always "real" (functional) bugs to be fixed. Perpetual questions:
> what's "enough" documentation?, how do we make sure people can find it
> easily?, how do we name this better (but still preserve the existing names
> for people already using it / backwards compatibility)?

> I make no excuses here: yes, the CPack and CTest documentation are lacking /
> lagging behind the CMake documentation. However, it will take a very real
> and concerted and time-consuming effort to improve the situation. With the
> open source nature of the project, we have to be willing to accept the
> organic growth that occurs in the code base: the documentation will be the
> same: it will improve gradually, over time, as contributors are able to
> improve it.

I think the main problem is that you make it very hard for people to
contribute. KDE and Homebrew (two other open-source projects I've
written a lot of code for over the years) make this very easy.

Kitware is great, you clearly write good code and have done a great
job creating CMake and CPack. They are fantastic tools. However, I
think until you are more encouraging of external developers you will
struggle to make huge improvements to CMake.


> Until then, at least the mailing list has a reasonable response rate and, it
> seems, sufficient participation from knowledgeable folks willing to pitch in
> and answer. So... if you're confused about something, please ask here.
> We (I hope I speak for all CMake devs, here) take no offense. We welcome
> discussion, always.

The mailing list is OK but most people don't want to sign up to a
mailing list and receive lots of emails that have nothing to do with
them. I'm only signed up because I want to try and get some patches
merged and was told that I should discuss things here rather than the
bugtracker.

I hope I don't cause any offense here either. I'm passionate about
CMake because I like the tool and want to make it better.

-- 
Mike McQuaid
http://mikemcquaid.com