[sldev] [VWR] Switch to cmake?

[Bill Hoffman]

Richard Nelson wrote:
> I would say that it is already a pain to make project changess (adding a 
> new file, moving them around, etc).  As it stands, this would involve 
> making concomitant changes for the other two platforms, with the 
> requisite shuffling of changes through svn or file share.  In my case, I 
> don't have ready access to a Linux build environment, so I rely on the 
> build rules just working or someone else being on top of things.  Also, 
> MSDev doesn't seem to have good integrated svn support that I've found, 
> so there is already a required manual step in adding/moving files via 
> svn (and the opportunity to forget).
> 
> As it stands, I end up splitting classes into separate files far less 
> often then I should in order to avoid the hassle.  With a cmake file, I 
> could make the changes in one place, and be pretty certain that the 
> other platforms will pick it up.  So, as an IDE user, I'm in favor.
> 

As for cross platform building, if you adopt CMake, I would highly 
recommend that you also adopt the dashboard system we use for testing. 
The dashboard for CMake can be found here:

http://public.kitware.com/dashboard.php?name=cmake

Each night, on all supported platforms, cmake is built, and a complete 
test suite is run.  The results are posted to the above web page. In 
addition, as new files are checked into (svn or cvs) for the project, 
continuous builds are also run.  Those results are also posted to the 
web page.  When an error happens build or test failure, email is sent to 
the person that checked in the code.  In this way, when I make a change 
on windows that breaks Linux, I get an email shortly after letting me 
know that it is broken, and what the error was.  I don't think testing 
like this would be possible without a consistent cross platform build 
system.

-Bill