[cmake-developers] Generating buildsystem metadata from CMake

[Stephen Kelly]

Aleix Pol wrote:

>> By 'in scope' you mean 'used by the primary CMakeLists.txt files via
>> include() or find_package()' or something like that? OK, let's see if
>> that's the best source of that data or if we should add something new
>> internally in cmake.
> By in scope I mean whether a variable or a target defined in such files.

I see.

>>> [4] Because cmake is really slow and you often want to have the
>>> metadata file updated often, every time one of the cmake files in the
>>> project change.
>>
>> OK, maybe we can add something for that, but is it the generation stage
>> that is the slow part? How much time would we gain by doing this?
> Well, I'm unsure what's the best way to go about it. I understand that
> given the json file will be executed after all the processing of the
> sources it won't help much if we just skip the generation. Also maybe
> it's possible to optimize the configure process all together.

Yes, if a 'metadata only' mode can be shown to make sense, it can be added 
in the future.

Thanks,

Steve.