Strategy for choosing a build system

[Ralf Habacker]

David Faure schrieb:
> 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.
>   
 From the relating threads and my personal experience the current state 
looks to me like

- scons works relative good on windows (I can build and install whole 
kdelibs and also packages outside kdelibs, left is the uninstalled 
libraries search path problem), but has major problems on unix and mac 
os x. In the opposite

- cmake works good for unix and probably mac os x, but is in the 
beginning on windows (dcop and win are one of the simpliest subdirs)

Ralf