[cmake-developers] cmake -E capabilities

[Stephen Kelly]

Tobias Hunger wrote:

> On So, 2016-07-03 at 12:33 +0200, Stephen Kelly wrote:
>> Tobias Hunger wrote:
>> 
>> > Either we should have multiConfig return a list of configuration names
>> > that will be generated or I do not see any need to have the information
>> > in the first place.
>> 
>> I think when using qmake with QtCreator, the user can choose the
>> configuration at build time by selecting it from the left-side menu.
> 
> I do not understand what you are getting at.
> 
> That widget already works for cmake projects in Qt Creator: It switches
> between different build directories with different configurations.

Ok. I'm not sure that worked when I tried it years ago :).

>> Such a feature would also work with cmake projects if the user chooses to
>> use the XCode generator on mac or VS generator on Windows (or if someday
>> we have a multi-config Ninja generator or so).
> 
> How is a multi-config ninja generator better than just having to build
> directories next to each other, each with one configuration? You might
> save a bit of disk space (probably not a lot). Will you save a significant
> amount of processing time?
> 
> The one benefit I can think of is switching between configurations will
> probably be a lot faster. But that is nothing that is done so often that
> it warrants optimizing for IMHO.

What I have in mind is not optimization. As you say, if this is not needed 
at this point for IDE integration, then we can drop the idea.

> Either the clients do not care or they need to know which configurations
> those are going to be.

This can be retrieved by reading the STRINGS property of the 
CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE cache variable.

Thanks,

Steve.