The Technical Working Group's mission statement

[Matt Rogers]

On Wed, Mar 15, 2006 at 04:28:32PM +0100, R.F. Pels wrote:
> On Wednesday 15 March 2006 01.52, Matt Rogers wrote:
> 
> > Please feel free to start coding it yourself then. None of us who work on
> > kdevelop have enough time for that. :(
> 
> Which makes me very wary about how long it will actually take. I'm afraid that 
> this answer implies that even when KDE4 is out it will take considerable time 
> for cmake support in kdevelop to materialize. If that happens we're going to 
> end up in a situation where kdevelop users are going to end up in a position 
> where kdevelop simply lacks a project manager for cmake projects while they 
> are unable to use automake projects because KDE4 does not support that 
> buildsystem anymore.
> 

If you're that worried about it, then take my suggestion and start coding
it yourself. KDevelop can always use more developers. Otherwise, please keep 
the rest of your pessimissism to yourself with regard to this issue. Your 
concerns have been noted, and I've added CMake support for KDevelop to my 
ever-growing TODO list, but as you should know, the only way to really get 
something done is to do it yourself.

> Let me reiterate and please enlighten me if I'm wrong here:
> 
> - cmake has support for parallel compilation

correct

> - cmake maintainers are actively supporting in making cmake the 
>   KDE4 buildsystem

correct

> - cmake can generate kdevelop project files

correct

> - cmake documentation seems to me as flimsy at best

it's getting better

> - there is no widespread cmake experience under KDE developers

correct. however, it's not really any different than the current
situation with autotools

> - there is rudimentary support for cmake in kdevelop

currently there is no explicit support for cmake in kdevelop. you'll
have to use a project/buildsystem type called Custom Makefiles.

> - there is no project manager in kdevelop that works with cmake and
>   can roughly do the same as the automake based project manager

correct

> - there are zero project templates for cmake in kdevelop geared towards
>   Qt and/or KDE projects

correct. this situation is easily resolved however.

> - kdevelop maintainers do not have time to add reasonable cmake support 
>   in short notice

correct, nor do we have a release that we would be able to put it in
until KDE 4 comes out. 

> - if I want to use kdevelop to port a KDE application to KDE4 I need
>   to use cmake because there is no automake support in KDE4 anymore

this is not true, yet. Currently you can use cmake or automake (through
unsermake) and expect to get roughly the same results. eventually
automake support will be removed though.

KDevelop 4 will continue to support automake just like KDevelop
3 does, and hopefully be better at it.

> - without something like a project manager kdevelop reduces to a
>   plain code editing environment 

kdevelop does have and will continue to have a project manager. Please
quit making shit up.

> - without some handholding, new KDE developers need to climb the
>   cmake learning curve, which might be not so difficult for those
>   accustomed to automake or qmake or similar, but can be quite
>   daunting for those accustomed to using a project manager such as
>   in Visual Whatever for example.

Sure, but this is no different than the current situation of having to
climb the Makefile.am learning curve.