[CMake] open source project for CMake ports?

[Bill Hoffman]

Aaron Turner wrote:
> Trying to get up to speed on this thread- apologies if I missed this.
> 
> Long story short, as an OSS developer and new Cmake user, I'm less
> interested in getting libfoo building with Cmake and a lot more
> interested in CMake modules for detecting and using libfoo in my own
> project.  In reality, these are very much interrelated, but let me
> explain....
> 
> A lot of the things I take for granted in Autotools requires me to
> roll my own in Cmake; which when you have a number of dependencies is
> daunting when you consider all the issues with different platforms &
> library versions.  I think this is one of the biggest roadblocks for
> people to switch to Cmake- knowing that they're leaving behind years
> of tribal knowledge which has been created in Autoconf scripts.
> 
> If there was an equivalent of the Autoconf Macro Archive
> (http://autoconf-archive.cryp.to/) for Cmake, which was a collection
> of common tests I think that would help a great deal.  Obviously,
> Cmake already includes some of these sorts of tests for GUI toolkits
> and libraries of that nature, but obviously there are a lot of obvious
> holes in the list (gmp, pcre, (win)pcap, etc).  Also there are a
> number of system capability tests missing like checking for strictly
> aligned memory.
> 
> I'm currently having to write modules for a number of these cases and
> it's a lot of work.  Honestly, it is more work then just porting my
> code from Autotools to Cmake because I'm already an expert on my code
> and how it compiles- trying to become an expert on these other
> libraries and systems is a lot more effort.
> 
> Honestly, I think in the long run, improving the existing standard
> library of Cmake modules to allow developers to concentrate on how to
> build their own code rather then figure out how to link to various
> libraries and write portability tests will win grow the Cmake user
> base much faster.
> 
That is really a separate issue.  The Modules directory in CMake is 
addressing that, and I think there is a google code project that has 
some CMake find stuff as well.  The problem this is addressing is an 
easy way to build some libraries that maybe difficult to currently build 
  on windows.  I think that was at the start of the thread.  For linux 
and other Unix like platforms ./configure; make; make install, then run 
cmake and have it find the installed stuff works great.  For windows 
this requires cygwin, and lots of work.  If the projects had cmake files 
the build on windows would be much easier, and by using add_subdirectory 
the projects are easy to build.

But a http://autoconf-archive.cryp.to/ type archive for CMake modules 
would also be a good idea.

-Bill