[cmake-developers] VS10-12 generators deserve much more love

[Dan Cristiu]

Good pointers thanks a lot. I can now also see the efforts for supporting
WinRT which I applaud. I would like to digress a bit if that's permitted.
The whole discussion has put me down a bit.

The current approach seems pretty stiff and leaves little room for
manoeuvre. When it comes to platforms for example, some are hard-coded and
others are specifically detected. I don't understand why there is a mixture
of them, and this mixture seems to be still promoted. Neither model
supports new platforms or I have yet to find a way to include them without
code changes.

Are there any plans to move onto a more extensible approach in the future?
Far away from project files which content gets created via code. Maybe a
template style approach whereby generators simply point to templates which
use the variables set up during the execution of the cmake scripts? People
could then create their local ones if they need to extend/customize them
and push them to an unofficial public repository where others could
download them, comment on them or improve them. Funny enough, even if these
templates were actually CMake script files it would make a huge difference.


On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 2:14 PM, Brad King <brad.king at kitware.com> wrote:

> On 02/16/2014 08:25 PM, Dan Cristiu wrote:
> > I've decided to review the code in there and clean it to the point
> > where the duplication is minimal.
>
> I would welcome such an effort.  Can you cite some examples of
> duplication that you have in mind to reduce?
>
> > In any case, was there a reason why the toolset is not part of the
> > generator name? i.e. "Visual Studio 11 Win64 V110".
>
> The platform never should have been part of the generator name
> either but that convention was established long ago.  The version
> of VS and the target platform are orthogonal.  So is the toolset,
> which is why -T is separate.
>
> Support to specify the PlatformToolset is pretty new so it has
> not fully matured yet.  It can be set from cmake-gui by using the
> Add Entry button to add CMAKE_GENERATOR_TOOLSET prior to the first
> configuration.  I would welcome an effort to add a dedicated field
> in the dialog for it, especially if it could be a drop-down selection
> of available toolsets.
>
> > additional settings which must be part of the project file
>
> We have some basic support for that:
>
>
> http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/v2.8.12/cmake.html#prop_tgt:VS_GLOBAL_variable
>
> but it doesn't cover everything.
>
> -Brad
>
> --
>
> Powered by www.kitware.com
>
> Visit other Kitware open-source projects at
> http://www.kitware.com/opensource/opensource.html
>
> Please keep messages on-topic and check the CMake FAQ at:
> http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/CMake_FAQ
>
> Follow this link to subscribe/unsubscribe:
> http://public.kitware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cmake-developers
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://public.kitware.com/pipermail/cmake-developers/attachments/20140217/d000b222/attachment-0002.html>