Building multiple source modules

[Michael Jansen]

> > If you are interested, check out this:
> > http://www.kitware.com/products/html/BuildingExternalProjectsWithCMake2.8
> > .html It checks out, patches, configures, builds and installs cmake or
> > any other projects.
> 
> ExternalProject is really powerful, one of the best additions to CMake
> in the last years, IMHO.
> 
> See http://gitorious.org/winstng for an example of ExternalProject
> which bootstraps, downloads and builds a Wt ( http://webtoolkit.eu )
> and all of its dependencies.
> 
> It's a tiny shell script (.bat on Windows, bash script on Unix) that
> downloads and builds everything from CMake to the PostgreSQL. The only
> requirement is a C++ compiler.
> 
> winstng still needs some fixes on Mac (where GNU coreutils, etc are
> not available) but it works pretty well on Windows and Linux, and on
> Mac if you haven't messed too much with Macports/Fink/Homebrew.

I do not contend this is helpful in some cases.

But does it help you update the stuff and rebuild again? Do you envision 
making it possible to build all of kde (libs, base, pim, graphics ...) with 
just one simple all encompassing mega cmake file? Does it help you with 
controlling your environment and making builds really reproducable? Make it 
possible to build independent projects in a needed configuration and order?

I think we should follow the typical unix mentality here. One Tool to 
configure and compile one checkout. One tool above that to make it possible to 
handle many of them.

That is at least my idea.

Mike