[vtkusers] autoconf macros to check for VTK

[Francesco Montorsi]

Hi,

Mathieu Malaterre wrote:
> 
>> 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.
> 
> 
> 'It's a great tool since it's used only by developers' ?
sorry; I did not explain that very well: I mean that only the developer who create the 
software package needs to know what is bakefile, how to call it and what's the XML 
definition file which is used by bakefile to write all other makefiles/project-files.

The user will just find that the package contains a perfect set of identical makefiles 
(all configurable through standard makefiles options) for a long list of compilers/IDEs.
He doesn't even need to know that they were all generated through Bakefile and he doesn't 
absolutely need to have bakefile installed to use the makefiles / project files.


>> Autoconf is The standard on unix.
> 
> 
> There is no standard on unix :)
;)
anyway if 90% of unix software packages (NOTE: raw estimation based on my personal 
experience - it would be nice if more serious statistics about build systems existed) use 
autoconf, that could be called a 'standard'...


> Also IMHO if people start developing CMake, Jam, Qmake, Rake, ant and 
> others I suspect autoconf had some drawbacks...
yes, that's true.
I'm not saying autoconf is perfect, nor that it's easy to learn.
I just say that if you learn how to use it, it can be powerful and that a project based on 
Cmake should not exclude that other projects, based on autoconf or whatever other build 
system, will use that cmake-based project.


>> 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.
> 
> 
> I am sorry to hear that. But if you would describe your problem I am 
> sure you will find help in this very mailing list.
I solved them; in short I had to do a lot of web searches to understand that a strange 
error message was meaning "the cmake that you installed from the precompiled linux binary 
distributed by cmake official site doesn't work for your FC4 64bit: you need to recompile 
Cmake from sources".
Then the problems I had to compile Cmake were because of my faults, I just found them 
difficult to fix because of the error messages were not very clear.
(Ok, I know: autoconf error messages are even worse).


>> 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).
> 
> 
> VTK license allows you almost anything, so feel free to distribute it, 
> and add a link to your pc file from the VTK Wiki page. Thanks.
well, the problem is that something like a .pc file for pkg-config makes sense only if it 
is integrated in the official build system of VTK since it would be used to reliably 
detect VTK presence and location on user-systems.
And I doubt that many users would separately install that .pc file...

so, just say me if such idea can be accepted or it doesn't (I guess it won't :-(). If it 
doesn't, then I'll create a M4 macro to detect VTK (even without pkg-config) and I'll put 
that in VTK wiki.


>> AC_PATH_VTK([minimum-version], [action-if-found],
>> [action-if-not-found])
> 
> 
> Can I use that if I am using XCode ? Can I use that if I am using Visual 
> Studio ?
no, but you asked me if autoconf could be as "clear" as Cmake in its syntax...


Francesco