[CMake] Gyp VS CMake

[Bill Hoffman]

>> This will never happen with CMake.  CMake will always be required to be on
>> the machine doing the build.   There is just no other way to do system
>> introspection.  Also, if you don't have something like CMake around it is
>> hard to write cross platform build files that are complex in anyway (i.e.
>> needs to copy files at build time).
>
> Actually, it could happen, or at least the requirement could be softened.
>
> I developed a bootstrapper for Wt ( http://webtoolkit.eu ) which
> requires nothing more than a C++ compiler and a command prompt
> (Windows) or bash (Unix) to build. It's essentially a couple of
> scripts which download CMake and some basic dependencies, then
> ExternalProject_Add all other dependencies, making the project
> buildable in a self-contained directory, including all the
> dependencies. Maybe some option could be added to CMake to "generate"
> such scripts and make it easier to bootstrap? (Details on what I did
> here: "Bootstrap your CMake project" - http://www.elpauer.org/?p=614 )
>

Sure, bootstrapping CMake is possible, and consistent with the design goals, and
the reason CMake does not use python or any other language.  CMake was
designed to have one dependency, a C++ compiler.  The thought was that if you
were going to build a C++ program, you would have to have a C++ compiler.
However, for the CMake can not be installed crowd, bootstrapping somehow is
not an option...  Nice blog by the way, thanks for the CMake compliments!

-Bill