[CMake] CMakeModules repository at GitHub?

[Miller Henry]

Nice theory, but I have to deal with the real world where many projects don't provide a project config .cmake script. They see no reason to: they don't build with cmake, other downstreams don't build with cmake.  It seems to them that they are supporting one system, and there are hundreds. I do not see this changing anytime soon.

Until the day comes when all projects provide their configuration in a format cmake can read: we are forced to create find_package modules for things we want to use. A way to share this work is highly desired.  As a user of cmake I've seen many poor find_foo modules that only barely work because in our build environment, and won't work when we upgrade our OS.  Having a place to collect find_foo modules for projects that don't place nice allows people to actually handle all the little things that can change between system, and thus gives us a second best that works fairly well.

I'm not sure how we will ever get all packages to play nice. It pretty much requires that all other build systems can create and read the configuration files as well.  Hacking autotools to provide and use .cmake files if they exist would be a good start on unix/linux (good luck!).  I have no clue how you will get visual studio to support anything like this.  I don't even know what we are asking for to make this work on Macs.  (I probably forgot some weird system that cmake also supports)

-----Original Message-----
From: cmake-bounces at cmake.org [mailto:cmake-bounces at cmake.org] On Behalf Of David Cole
Sent: Thursday, March 28, 2013 11:25 AM
To: mateusz at loskot.net; cmake at cmake.org
Subject: Re: [CMake] CMakeModules repository at GitHub?

CMake needs no new Find modules.

All projects should provide a "project config file .cmake script" 
readable by CMake's find_package, and installed in a location where CMake can find it, so that a CMake find module is completely unnecessary.

For other types of module improvements, I think becoming a CMake developer and participating in the active development of CMake itself is a much more useful thing than having a separate repository for stuff like this.

This is just my opinion, and I would love to hear what others think. 
But you'll be hard-pressed to convince me that a find module inside CMake itself is better than a config file installed with a project's install tree.


David C.


-----Original Message-----
From: Mateusz Loskot <mateusz at loskot.net>
To: cmake <cmake at cmake.org>
Sent: Thu, Mar 28, 2013 8:44 am
Subject: [CMake] CMakeModules repository at GitHub?


Hi,

To CMake maintainers,
what do you think about creating new repository at

https://github.com/Kitware/CMakeModules

as incubator for contributed CMake modules?

Here is outline of the process I'm thinking of:

1. I have developed new module for find_package 2. I submit pull request adding this new module to CMakeModules
- this is effectively act of request for comments and review 3. The module undergoes cycle of community-based review-improve-review iterations 4. The module collects +1 votes 5. Once some sort of critical mass of +1 has been received, the module is added to CMakeModules repo 6. The newly added module gets stamp "CMake Approved"

Next, users can report bugs, submit improvements through pull requests or even issues marking module is out of date and requires maintenance.
GitHub is a tiptop venue for such thing.

IMO, CMake modules have suffered of the issues of fragmentation and distribution, and it's time to apply "Stop Rolling Your Own" [1] approach, and perhaps stream all those precious efforts into one sink.

[1] http://ithaca.arpinum.org/2013/01/02/git-prompt.html

Best regards,
--
Mateusz Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net
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