[cmake-developers] [CMake] Visual Studio <Version> <Arch> - Ninja Generator

[James Johnston]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: cmake-developers [mailto:cmake-developers-bounces at cmake.org]
> On Behalf Of Brad King
> Sent: Wednesday, September 09, 2015 15:00
> To: cmake-developers at cmake.org
> Subject: Re: [cmake-developers] [CMake] Visual Studio <Version> <Arch> -
> Ninja Generator
> 
> On 09/02/2015 03:34 PM, James Johnston wrote:
> > useful if the Visual Studio generators in CMake were refactored
> > somewhat
> 
> Even without the C# motivation I think factoring out a "MSBuild" generator
> infrastructure internally will be useful.  Currently we call it "VS 10"
> because it happened to be the first version to use MSBuild project files.
> Are you proposing to have some kind of internal object model for the
> MSBuild project files to separate their construction from the actual
> generation?

Right, something like that.

Another motivation: if somebody ever wanted to write a generator for
Embarcadero C++ Builder projects... guess what format the project files are
in... MSBuild...  this otherwise has nothing to do with VStudio...

Again, not something I'm working on right now but just putting some ideas
out there. :)

> 
> > it would be useful to have Visual Studio available as an "Extra" CMake
> > generator.  For example, specification of "Visual Studio 2015 - Ninja"
> 
> This functionality sounds reasonable but the name of the extra/generator
> pair looks funny when spelled out that way.  We should consider having
> another way to specify the extra generator.

This name is consistent with the other extra generators:
http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.3/manual/cmake-generators.7.html#id12

"[Extra] generator names have the form <extra-generator> -
<main-generator>."

But I agree it is just confusing at this point.  Maybe this format could be
deprecated in favor of a new cmake.exe switch to specify an extra generator.

Best regards,

James Johnston