[vtkusers] autoconf macros to check for VTK

Francesco Montorsi f18m_cpp217828 at yahoo.it
Thu Nov 17 11:31:04 EST 2005


Hi,


--- Mathieu Malaterre <mathieu.malaterre at kitware.com>
ha scritto: 
> 	Please go to the CMake page at http://cmake.org,
> you should understand 
> why VTK does not make use of the autoconf/automake
> thing. You have to 
> understand that VTK is aimed at being cross
> plateform and CMake try to 
> respect every plateform while offering the tool you
> are used to develop 
> (XCode, Visual Studio...). How do you expect being
> able to support that 
> with autotools/autoconf/automake ?
I use bakefile (http://bakefile.sf.net) for all my
build systems.
It's a great tool since it's used only by developers
to create build systems based on other standard build
systems: MSVC, borland, watcom, etc on win32, autoconf
on unix.
Autoconf is The standard on unix.
So, yes: I'm going to support a lot of platforms. I
don't like CMake and it gave me much more problems
(for example with VTK) than autoconf.

Anyway, this is not a critic to Cmake.
I just want to say that I think that VTK developers
should make easier to interface VTK also to other
build systems (autoconf but also others) in order to
enlarge the user & developer base of VTK; specially
when it requires a very little effort (like writing a
small .pc file to copy during unix installation).



> 	As a side note when I create a new project that
> need VTK I write in my 
> CMakeLists.txt:
> 
> FIND_PACKAGE(VTK REQUIRED)
> INCLUDE(${VTK_USE_FILE})
> 
> 	Can autoconf be more succint ?
sure !
AC_PATH_VTK([minimum-version], [action-if-found],
[action-if-not-found])




> [Stop the autoconf insanity! Why we need a new build
> system.]
> http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/889/
nice article; I posted my comment there.
Anyway give a look also to the comments of autoconf
supporters; they raise some good points...

Thanks,
Francesco


> 
> Francesco Montorsi wrote:
> > any vtk developer can comment on this ?
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > Francesco
> > 
> > 
> > Francesco Montorsi wrote:
> > 
> >> Hello all,
> >>    I've found this mail in vtkusers archive; I'm
> in the same situation.
> >> Does anyone knows of an M4 macro which can be
> used in configure 
> >> scripts to detect VTK installations ?
> >>
> >> If it does not exist, I'm going to write it.
> >> However before doing that I would like to know
> from VTK developers if 
> >> they plan to ever include something like a .pc
> file for pkg-config in 
> >> linux VTK distro. It would be a small file to add
> to VTK installation 
> >> process which would make a lot easier using VTK
> under unix as you 
> >> should then write just:
> >>
> >> pkg-config vtk --cxxflags
> >>
> >> to get the CXXFLAGS required to compile a
> program/lib against VTK. The 
> >> same would be for --libs. A .pc file is quite
> easy to write and it 
> >> would solve the autoconf macro problem as I would
> then use the 
> >> PKG_CHECK_MODULES(VTK ...) macro.
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >> Francesco Montorsi
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>  >Anybody out there writing software that uses
> VTK and builds with
> >>  >autoconf? In my current projects that need it
> I'm forcing users to
> >>  >specify --with-vtk=/path/to/vtk as an argument
> to the ./configure
> >>  >script, but this is less than ideal.
> >>  >
> >>  >Anyone else run into this before? Do you have
> your own custom autoconf
> >>  >macros to look for VTK in some obvious paths?
> Would you like to share?
> >>  >=)
> >>  >
> >>  >-tom
> >> _______________________________________________
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> > 
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> 
> 



	

	
		
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