[cmake-developers] Extracting target metadata, IDE integration

[Brad King]

On 10/01/2014 07:46 PM, Aleix Pol wrote:
> I'm very interested in getting this in and iterating forward.
> 
> Any comments? How do changes get integrated?

My main concern is that the format has not been proven with a
corresponding implementation of an actual IDE/plugin to use it.
Once we start producing a format changing it later will be
problematic for compatibility.  Even though we added a version
number to the file, an IDE might not be updated along with a
CMake that produces a newer version.

Perhaps rather than a boolean "CMAKE_EXPORT_IDE_METADATA"
setting to enable this, the value should be a version number.
That way enabling it requires explicit specification of which
format version is desired.  In this case we would need to use
a format version number that is independent of th CMake version
number.  It would simply be incremented every time changes are
made.  If the version number has the form <major>.<minor> then
we could increment the minor number whenever fields are added
and the major number whenever fields are removed or changed.

-Brad