[vtk-developers] CMake.

[Prabhu Ramachandran]

hi,

>>>>> "BH" == Bill Hoffman <bill.hoffman at kitware.com> writes:

    BH> This is a general problem with creating portable GUI's that
    BH> work on UNIX machines.  Our goal in cmake was to require the
    BH> minimum set of tools possible to build cmake.  No
    BH> tcl/python/tk/etc.  We don't want people having to install
    BH> several packages before they can even start building cmake.
    BH> On windows this works good, because there is a standard widget
    BH> set available to use (MFC).  However, on UNIX, an FLTK gui was
    BH> contributed to cmake, but FLTK seems to have trouble running
    BH> consistently across platforms.

Not really, FLTK apps on my machine seem to run very well.  But I am
no expert on FLTK so cant really help.  A friend of mine uses it
extensively for his work on windows and is pretty happy.  Charl
Botha's screenshots also look very impressive.

    BH> So, I guess the only widget set that is guaranteed to be found
    BH> on a UNIX system is Xt or Xaw.  Are there any volunteers that
    BH> would be interested in developing/maintaining a new cmake GUI
    BH> for any of those widget sets?  Is there some widget set that I
    BH> don't know about that comes standard on all UNIX machines?

I think GTK is getting there.  wxWindows seems a good choice too.
FLTK should work - maybe its just a bug somewhere.

    BH> The only other option is to create a text based interface for
    BH> cmake.  (Perhaps use curses??)  I think this could be done,
    BH> and make things better.  It would work something like this:

That is an interesting option.  Something like rebuilding the linux
kernel - they have a make menuconfig, which is really neat.

    BH> prompt% CMakeSetup [path to source]

    BH> Main Menu: c.)  Configure f.)  Finish q.)  Quit l.)  List New
    BH> Cache Entires a.)  List All Cache Entries e.)  Edit Entry
    BH> Enter Choice: c

<snip>

    BH> Does this sound worthwhile to implement?  Are there any
    BH> volunteers to help build a better UNIX GUI?  I think having
    BH> both a text based UI, and a better GUI might be the best for
    BH> UNIX.

It is a nice option but I am afraid I cant help. :( My plate is
overflowing as it is.

    >> (3) CMake itself seems to support no command line arguments.  I
    >> can't even do $ cmake --version.

    BH> cmake --help

Yes, my bad.

Thanks for all the feedback.

prabhu