[CMake] CMake and Lua

[Brandon Van Every]

On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 5:15 PM, klaas.holwerda <ngi at klaasholwerda.nl> wrote:
> Ken Martin wrote:
>  > Which is why CMake has
>  > include, macro, foreach etc. which are all staples of a programming
>  > language.
>  >
>  Right, much better to spend time on something else, and use Lua for all
>  these things.

Historically, that would have been true, at CMake's beginning.  I
don't see why it is true now.  The Kitware team is experienced with
the CMake codebase and hasn't shown much evidence of employee
turnover.  I don't get the impression that they've spent tons of
energy adding the recent scoping and function support.  Seems like
their approach is cost-effective as compared to ripping everything up
to stick Lua in there.

>  Add wxLua , and  the graphical interface becomes easy too.

I thought CMake had a wx frontend at some point.  If it didn't go
anywhere, it's from somebody's lack of follow-through, not a language
barrier.  Lotsa people do wx from C++.

> CMakeSetup is nice, but i can't organize options the way i want.

Customizing the GUI for your purposes doesn't benefit the
off-the-shelf CMake community.  If we try to teach everyone how to use
the standard GUI and you've done something completely different, then
depending on how different you made it, it might not be worth calling
it CMakeSetup.  On the other hand, if you are wishing for modest
customizations, put your specific ideas on the mailing list, see if
others agree, make a feature request, etc.  Such features do tend to
get done, if there's a clear case for how they benefit people and
they're doable.

>  So would it be possible to make some hybrid kind of Cmake, which makes
>  it possible to slowly migrate.

Sure.  You personally could make it right now.  Getting Kitware to
agree to some kind of future path and halfway house is a whole 'nother
matter.

I don't think such a migration can be slow.  The slower it is, the
longer everyone is overburdened with supporting 2 scripting languages.
 I think a migration needs a language translator, so that builds can
be migrated quickly to the new, preferred, standard language.  CMake
script --> Lua translation is certainly doable, but someone would have
to do it, and it would be real work.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every