[Openchemistry-developers] LibXML2 ExternalProject and Visual Studio 2015 Community

[Marcus D. Hanwell]

Hi Rob,

On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 2:44 PM, Rob McDonald <rob.a.mcdonald at gmail.com> wrote:
> I maintain a separate open source project that uses a CMake build
> system that is somewhat similar to that of Open Chemistry.  I make
> heavy use of ExternalProject_Add to handle dependencies, have a
> SuperBuild, etc.
>
> When I set up our build system (Jan 2014 or so), I borrowed liberally
> from your External_libxml2.cmake.  This was back when LibXML2 was at
> version 2.7.8.  I have happily been using Visual Studio 2010 Express
> and now Professional.

I am glad you were able to use it as a starting point.
>
> Some new developers have joined our project and are trying to use
> Visual Studio 2015 Community.

I have been thinking about this myself, and wondering how much work it
would be to update our dependencies for VS2015.
>
> The existing build system complains extensively (and fails) about some
> snprintf macro definitions.  I noticed that your project has updated
> to 2.9.1 and has tweaked the build system in the process.
>
> I did my best to match those updates -- and still got the snprintf
> problems.  I updated libxml2 to 2.9.3 (the latest) and the snprintf
> problems all went away -- great news.  Unfortunately, I now run into
> problems with many unresolved external symbols during the link step.

I have not yet done this, and concentrate on VS2010. I think we should
move to VS2015, but there are quite a few changes to the compilers. I
am hoping to have some time to look into this over the Christmas
break, but am currently still building on VS2010.
>
> My system is a little different than yours (I go to great lengths to
> force static linking and also disable a few more options than you do),
> but it is similar enough that I thought it was worth asking here.
>
> Has anyone in your project tried building with Visual Studio 2015
> Community?  Have you run into these problems?
>
No, and I would gladly integrate patches from anyone who has made
progress. I fear a number of our dependencies will have issues, and I
don't currently have the time to look into this in any more depth. It
is something I hope to do soon though.

Marcus