[cmake-developers] daemon-mode meeting last Tuesday

[Daniel Pfeifer]

On Fri, Jun 24, 2016 at 5:24 PM, Tobias Hunger <tobias.hunger at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Daniel,
>
> On Fri, Jun 24, 2016 at 5:08 PM, Daniel Pfeifer <daniel at pfeifer-mail.de> wrote:
>>>> Currently cmake-gui supports switching generators, build trees, etc., so
>>>> there is some precedent for such switching within a single process.  If
>>>> we have (re-)initialization bugs they should simply be fixed.
>>>
>>> So you opt for enabling the cmake-server to switch between different
>>> build directories?
>>
>> Clients who need this feature could simply restart the server in the
>> new directory.
>
> yes, that was what Stephen and me thought, too. I understood Brad to
> imply that we should just do everything inside server-mode and fix any
> fallout we run into instead.

I just opened cmake-gui and checked what exactly can be changed. There
is no graphical option to change the generator (you can change the
option sting in the cache, of course). When you change the binary
directory, it reads the cache from that directory, with the effect
that the source directory is changed too. To me, that feels like a
hard reset/restart.

To me it feels like the only reason why there is precedent for such
switching within a single process, is that cmake-gui links against
libcmake instead of using the cmake-server. I don't see any technical
reason apart from that it hasn't been split into two processes yet.