Strategy for choosing a build system

[David Faure]

It seems to me that the general consensus is that
- cmake is much more mature at this point
- bksys will give a much nicer solution in the end
(most KDE developers prefer an object-oriented syntax, and an all-in-one 
solution over generating Makefiles).

So it's a choice between "the solution that delivers the fastest"
and "the nicest solution which we have to wait a bit more for, but which we'll
be happy to use for years to come".

Therefore the real question is whether we really have to choose right now.
To that, I would say no. KDE4 isn't ready anyhow. So we could let the race 
continue as long as it doesn't prevent other kdelibs development:

- Laurent was pushing yesterday for a choice so that we don't have to update
everything when renaming/moving/creating source files, but we could let
those who care about a particular build system do that.
- I was pushing for the same reason, especially because I'd like to reorganize
kdelibs completely soon as discussed on kde-core-devel; but maybe we
can agree with those working on cmake and bksys if they are willing to adapt
those build systems for it. Anyway I think we have the qaction/kaction problem
to solve first.
- The problem is for people doing the port to other platforms (e.g. Windows and Mac OS X).
I understand that for them it's annoying to not know which system to concentrate
their effort upon. I could say "tell us which system you find best in terms of portability",
which is important indeed, but since both systems seem more or less ok for that, it's not
the main criteria for choosing the build system, so it doesn't really solve the problem..... 
So I think you have the same choice: choose to work on the cmake solution
(with the risk that we don't choose it in the end), or wait for Thomas' 
updated bksys solution (he sent me a mail today with his current "waf" tarball 
and the status of the discussion with the scons developers).
To be fair I think we can afford to wait a few more weeks before deciding.

-- 
David Faure, faure at kde.org, sponsored by Trolltech to work on KDE,
Konqueror (http://www.konqueror.org), and KOffice (http://www.koffice.org).