[CMake] Re: CMake script vs. Lua

[Rodolfo Schulz de Lima]

Mike Jackson escreveu:

> Don't forget that "time" is a real barrier, not a perceived one. How 
> long would you wait for the lua implementation. What other features 
> would you be willing to give up in order to have lua in x number of 
> months? Remember Kitware has to pay their employees. They get money from 
> contracts to work on cmake. Those contracts may dictate what Kitware can 
> work on within cmake and still be able to bill that work to the 
> contract. If you know someone that has enough free time to write/test a 
> full blown lua implementation that is willing to be paid nothing, then 
> bring them to the game...

I'd do it with pleasure, but Kitware is against the idea (rightfully), 
so why bother? :) It's their project, they do whatever they feel is 
important. I think we should be glad to the fact that they released 
CMake (and other projects) open source. I've abandoned 5 years of 
autotools and migrated to CMake, and I don't regret this at all. All I 
can do to retribute is to point out some bugs, write some patches, and 
try to make CMake a better tool.

Now, about Lua, apart from scoped variables (which cmake-cvs has), I 
don't need nothing 'fundamental' that CMake doesn't provide, so 
migration to Lua isn't needed right now. What I mostly miss in CMake is 
a nicer syntax. I look to a cmake script and it YELLS at me, with all 
those upper cased letters. The assignment syntax is ugly, and repeating 
the if clause in else() and endif() is boring and error prone (albeit 
this check can be disabled) and we can't exit a for loop before it ends 
(mimicking C's 'break' clause). I can live with those things, hoping 
that cmake language will improve with time.

Regards,
rod