[petsc-dev] CMake proof of concept

[Jed Brown]

On Mon, 31 May 2010 19:13:07 -0500, Barry Smith <bsmith at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:
> 
>    You have an awful lot of confidence in cmake. I have no problem at
> all setting up a system where PETSc can use cmake, that's great. But I
> don't want PETSc to ever be in a position of not being able to do
> something because kitware/whatever decided that they no longer or
> would not supported xyz or we have to wait six months for them to
> "port" to a "new system".

This is legitimate and obscure hardware/compilers is a big reason why
CMake has no business being the only build system for PETSc.  Given
make's failings on Windows or whatever, maybe builder.py will be able to
fill the role of canonical build system.

But in the world of IDE integration, I think they are way ahead because
quite a number of IDEs have written explicit support for CMake, in the
sense that you just point it to the project root and a set of build
directories and automatically get proper source analysis (including
correct macro expansion when you switch "PETSC_ARCH" from the menu), all
the relevant build targets, debug profiles, etc.  Since most IDEs have
already "bought in", I think it is a reasonable language for talking to
them, and suspect that direct PETSc/BuildSystem -> IDE-X links will be
unnecessary.

Jed