[cmake-developers] Better Eclipse CDT support

[Oliver Buchtala]

Hi Alex,

Am 19.04.2011 20:58, schrieb Alexander Neundorf:
> Hi Oliver,
>
> On Sunday 17 April 2011, Oliver Buchtala wrote:
>> Hi Alex,
>>
>> Am 17.04.2011 20:46, schrieb Alexander Neundorf:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> On Sunday 17 April 2011, Oliver Buchtala wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> I like to get involved offering work on the Eclipse CDT generator.
>>>>
>>>> Currently, the generated project setting is not very Eclipse'ish.
>>> There have been some changes in the 2.8.x versions. You have 2.8.4 ?
>> Yes. Actually current 'next' of stage.
>>
>>>>  - one large project
>>>>  - linear build, i.e., build failure in early sub projects stops the
>>>> whole chain
>>> You can change this e.g. by adding "-k" as CMAKE_ECLIPSE_MAKE_ARGUMENTS
>>> in the cmake cache.
>> What does '-k' do?
> Continue building other targets if some targets failed.
>
Alright. this is helpful ;)

>>>>  - project overview looks like navigator on  cmake binary directory
>>>>  - source files can be found in 'includes'
>>> Can you please explain the two points above in more detail ?
>> When I generate a CDT project, sources are in 'includes' (CDT built-in
> I guess there is a 
> include_directories(${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR})
> or something similar in the project, so this directory appears 
> under "Includes".
>
>> folder). The rest is the content of CMAKE_BINARY_DIR.
> Yes, plus the links to the sub projects.
Hmmm. I could not see them in my setting.

> What would you expect there ?
>
Some structure that gives me acces to the sources of the targets.
I suppose, you try to achieve this with sub-projects, but it does not
work properly in my case.

> Is your build dir a subdir of the source dir ?
Yes.
> In this case the link to CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR is not generated, otherwise there 
> should be a link [Source directory].
> It's a pity that Eclipse has such problems with out-of-source builds.
Ok - that is the problem with my setting then.
> It's really Eclipse which would need some fixing here.
> It would just have to accept that the base source directory is not always the 
> directory where the project file is located, but can be a directory specified 
> in the project file.
> This would help a lot.
>
>> See attachment: 2.4.8 CDT4 MinGW generator on CMake/Example, Eclipse
>> Helios, CDT 7.0.2
>>
>>>> All in all, this is not what a developer used to CDT wants to see ;)
>>>>
>>>> What I want to do:
>>>>  - generate projects for each target (like in VC generators)
>>> Can you please explain ?
>>> Do you want a separate build tree for each project ?
>>> Or just separate Eclipse project files for each target ?
>> For each target. Like in MSVC.
>>
>>> Are you sure people will want to import that many projects or can they be
>>> grouped in some way in a "superproject" ?
>> Eclipse users are used to a flat multi-project layout. They use working
>> sets to group projects.
>> Actually, I am personally not the greatest friend of complete flat
>> hierarchies - but this is actually the eclipse way.
>> You may have a look at large Eclipse java projects, e.g. Eclipse itself.
>> Importing all projects in a directory is a one-clicker. Though, they
>> should not be nested for that feature to work.
> Hmm.
> So this would be one build tree (i.e. one CMakeCache.txt with a global 
> Makefile-structure), and Eclipse-projects for each target, and a "working 
> set" which groups these projects together ?
>
Yep. One Make tree. And 'light-weight' eclipse projects as views on targets.
> Don't know. Maybe.
> Can you provide a screenshot of how this looks like ?
> Or maybe create a clone of the cmake git tree on gitorious or github and try 
> to implement it there ?
I have a working impl ....  will push it on github tommorrow :)
> Or, how about instead of creating one project per target one project per 
> project() call ?
>
Hmm. Is it typical to have many project calls?

I'll ping you tomorrow (after work).

Bye,
Oliver