[cmake-developers] Inquiry on contribution to NMake generator

[Nagy-Egri MC!tC) Ferenc]

Dear CMake devs,


I have a feature that I really wish someone would implement, but because I see that nobody really wishes to act upon it, I decided I’d try myself. I would very much like to see the NMake generator finally support multicore builds by adding Batch Mode support to the generated makefiles. I have had too much trouble with the Ninja generator, and quite frankly, I’d rather use a tool that is already preinstalled in most places, as opposed to ‘yet another build tool’ (same for jom.exe) when some of my users already complain about installing CMake itself.


First of all, I am an NMake newbie when it comes to actually writing/authoring scripts. Second, I am new to contributing to CMake as well. I am a seasoned C++ and GPGPU developer, so I believe I possess the neccesary skills to contribute to a project. I have also used Git before, though not in a project where I had no push rights and I needed to format proper patches (but this cannot be black magic).


I have read that the need for this feature has been brought up several times:


http://www.cmake.org/Bug/view.php?id=14145

http://www.cmake.org/Bug/view.php?id=2925


I have read on the CMake user mailing list, that the problem with Batch Mode support, is that it is not trivial to implement. I have looked at the NMake files in one of the feature requests linked above, and also the ones that CMake generates. The biggest difference, is that CMake tends to use A LOT of makefiles, a multi-level hierarchy of them.


Could someone give me a jump start as to:


What is the design of the NMake generator in CMake?


What is the pourpose of having so many makefiles?


What is the reason why it is not trivial to implement batch mode?


Where should I start browsing the source files?



I have very limited amount of ‘spare’ time, so it will most likely take a considerable amount of time for me to finish, if I will finish at all. However, I would like to try, and it were nice if the community could lend a hand at me getting at it.


Cheers,

Máté
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