[cmake-developers] splitting the man page ?

[Brad King]

Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> I had a look at the code, and found that there is already a 
> cmCommand::IsDeprecated(int major, int minor); which currently for all 
> commands returns false.
> If I would now make it return true for the deprecated commands, I would be 
> able to use this to generated the documentation of all/only the 
> deprecated/only the not deprecated commands.
> The problem here is that if I would do this, then cmake would report an error 
> (in cmMakefile::ExecuteCommand() ) everytime a deprecated command is used, so 
> many cmake scripts out there would break.
> 
> So what do you suggest ?
> Add another function IsObsolete() to cmCommand and use this only for the 
> docs ?
> Make IsDeprecated return true for the appropriate commands but don't let 
> cmMakefile::ExecuteCommand() generate an error for this case ? 

Don't hard-code the return value of IsDeprecated.  Instead we should
check the value of CMAKE_BACKWARDS_COMPATIBILITY and return true from
IsDeprecated if the value is set high enough.  However we don't want to
parse this variable every time a command is invoked, so we may want to
make sure there is a fast way to get this value from cmMakefile too.

-Brad