[cmake-developers] Better Eclipse CDT support

[Oliver Buchtala]

Am 20.04.2011 22:09, schrieb Alexander Neundorf:
> On Wednesday 20 April 2011, Oliver Buchtala wrote:
>> Hi Alex,
> ...
>>> 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.
> How does it work not properly ?
> Don't you have project() calls or are they not created ?
>
There is some link - but empty.
I have exactly one project call (like I usually do).

>>> 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 :)
> Cool :-)
>
Here we go:
git://github.com/oliver----/cmake_cdt7.git

I have intensively worked with this generator the last days - and am not
completely satisfied with it in the moment.
But basically, it does what I want.

I did not completely base upon your implementation (generating project
programmatically) but rather used a template approach.
The templates are created manually from within eclipse...
I'll try to improve my work a bit the next days...

>>> 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 don't know whether it's typical. It also depends what you 
> consider "many" ;-)
> I usually use project() for a somehow self-contained part of the build tree.
>
>> I'll ping you tomorrow (after work).
> I won't be back before Monday.
>
> Alex
Alright. Frohes Osterfest then ;)

Bye,
Oliver