[CMake] Having design issues implementing Xbox360 Generator support

David Genest david.genest at ubisoft.com
Tue Jan 19 16:34:29 EST 2010


> In this related thread from last June, I express my concern over the
> proliferation of CMake "generators" :
> http://www.cmake.org/pipermail/cmake/2009-June/029919.html

> I would much prefer to see a "use the existing Visual Studio generator
> but somehow extend the number of platforms it supports" approach for
> anything that actually gets committed to the CMake repository.

I totally agree with the intent and concern. In my case, deriving was only called for because of the existing architecture. The VisualStudio7Generator would have to be refactored to let external configurations driven by cmake scripts. I was not able to add a platform just by fiddling with cmake variables and scripts.

Maybe add a .cmake callback system that would let third parties add things proper to their platforms. If you read my design steps there was not a whole lot of things that I needed to do natively (in the C++ sense). In fact, I found that the changes were quite easy to do. But there would be a need to let the user configure additional tools (in the visual studio project), and modify/override compiler flag tables.

I can produce a patch to 2.8.0 of my preliminary work if you want to see the xbox360Generator.

> 
> Additionally, it sounds like this approach would be difficult to test
> in an automated fashion. I suppose we could just test the building of a
> generated XBox project, but it would be ideal if there were a way to
> set up an automated dashboard test to prove that the built product runs
> on the target machine.

I am not familiar with that. Unfortunately, presently, for security concerns and the rather experimental nature of my cmake work for our project, the company I work for would not let a company hosted machine build an exterior project. It is sad, but my company has not adopted open-source practice yet. 

> Of course, having expressed these doubts/concerns, I must say:
> It would totally rock to be able to build XBox (and PlayStation and
> Wii) games with CMake...!!

I agree!



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