[CMake] write file if different?

[j s]

You are entitled to your opinion, but there are several system
utilities that are available by default on many systems, including
rsync.  rsync has a well known interface, and is available by default
on Linux and Mac OS X.  The way CMake does things is often kludgy and
just feels wrong.  I often write scripts in more effective languages
and then run from within CMake on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.  Perl
and Python are often a much better way to go than trying to do
everything in CMake.


On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 11:14 PM, themiwi at gmail.com <themiwi at gmail.com> wrote:
> ----- Reply message -----
> From: "j s" <j.s4403 at gmail.com>
> To: "Michael Wild" <themiwi at gmail.com>
> Cc: "CMake mailing list" <cmake at cmake.org>
> Subject: [CMake] write file if different?
> Date: Wed, May 29, 2013 20:44
>
> On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 2:32 AM, Michael Wild <themiwi at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 28.05.2013 22:07, Matthew Woehlke wrote:
>> > Is there a built-in way to write a string to a file (a la FILE(WRITE))
>> > that will only write the file if the content would be different? (Or
>> > does FILE(WRITE) already work this way despite no obvious hint in the
>> > documentation that it does?)
>> >
>> > Right now I am writing to a temporary file and running cmake -E
>> > copy_if_different, then removing the temporary file, but this seems
>> > inelegant and I am wondering if there is a better solution.
>> >
> You can always use the rsync command, which is available for all
> systems, including Windows.
>
> That's probably the worst possible solution... CMake has everything that iy
> required to accomplish this built-in, so adding a unnecessary dependency
> that is only needed by the build system is a really bad idea...