[CMake] Documentation strategy

[Robert J. Hansen]

Brandon Van Every wrote:
> They aren't going to buy a book to do an evaluation.

They often will.  I can shell out $40, wait a few days for it to arrive
and get other paying work done in the meantime, then have enough data on
hand to evaluate CMake properly in just the space of a few hours... or I
can spend a few days discovering CMake through trial and error and not
doing anything to improve the bottom line.

In my case, the CMake book more than paid for itself.  I cannot imagine
that I am the only person who is in such a situation.

> A flaw in the analogy: everyone hates and wants to dump CVS.

"Everyone" is strong language here.  I prefer Subversion, but I know
others who prefer CVS and have their own reasons for it.

> In contrast, the Unix-only crowd doesn't have much reason to drop
> Autoconf / Automake.

I know many UNIX-only users who share my loathing of Autotools.
Autotools tends to get used mostly for sake of its install base and for
the perceived lack of other alternatives, not because people actually
like Autotools.  (Which some do, of course; but it appears to me they
are a minority.)

> The projects that see CMake as a slam dunk, are the ones that did an
> Autoconf build for the Unix stuff, and also had to maintain some
> horrible hand rolled Visual Studio build, typically with .BAT files.

At the time KDE converted to CMake it was a UNIX-only project, and they
considered CMake to be a slam dunk.  I consider CMake to be a win for my
own UNIX-only projects, albeit not a slam dunk.  (I'm not a CMake
partisan so much as an "anything but Autotools" partisan.)

I don't mean to be argumentative here, but it appears you're arguing far
too broadly.