Re: [Evolution-hackers] Switching from Autotools to CMake for core evolution products

[Paul Smith <paul mad-scientist net>]

On Wed, 2016-10-05 at 15:13 +0200, Milan Crha wrote:
> seems to be better than autotools, gives more freedom and easily
> allows the sources to be built much faster than with autotools (it
> builds here in ~1/3 of the time which uses autotools, still using
> "Unix Makefiles"). I know it's caused mostly by not having one giant
> Makefile.am, but this way it's easier (at least for me).

I have nothing really against CMake (we use it at work to excellent
effect as our product builds on GNU/Linux, OS X, and Windows).  Since I
don't build Evo myself anymore, it doesn't impact me anyway and
developers should definitely do what makes their lives simpler and more
productive.

I will point out that (a) I've had a lot of problems using CMake in a
cross-compilation environment, where autotools works flawlessly and
painlessly (at least as much as is possible when cross-compiling) and
also (b) autoconf's support for command line options that select
different features, etc. is IMO much simpler to work with and use than
CMake's.

But, maybe those things are not so important for Evolution since it's
probably not often cross-compiled and it relies on the GNOME
infrastructure and so maybe has fewer configuration options available.

Cheers!