[Adobe-source-devel] CMake: Time to talk about requirements

[Robert D. <rcd...@gm...>]

Hey guys,
I've got a basic and functional first pass on my CMake implementation. I can
successfully build, link, and run the Begin app, as well as ASL/APL. There's
2 major steps we need to take from here.

First, I need some of you guys to review my work so far. If this requires me
moving my work to the review branch, I will do so. Please give me some
detailed instruction on this if this is the path I am to take. I need you
guys to try using CMake to generate the projects. None of you will need to
become familiar with the CMake language at this point, you'll be working
directly with the command-line client or the GUI interface (on windows). I
want to gather opinions on the process, as well as potential suggestions for
improvement.

Secondly, we need to figure out requirements. Improving the work I've
already done is of course part of this, but we need to figure out long-term
requirements, such as unit testing support and extensibility level of the
scripts for future projects. There is also a particular topic we need to
discuss. A typical approach to creating CMake scripts is to have a "root"
CMakeLists.txt file that contains all of the inheritable, reusable code and
other entities. For example, the root of the Perforce repository would look
like this in a typical case:

//CMakeLists.txt
//cmake/find_modules/FindTBB.cmake//adobe_source_libraries/CMakeLists.txt
//adobe_platform_libraries/CMakeLists.txt

Here, we define all of the reusable cmake functions, macros, and variables
in CMakeLists.txt, and both ASL and APL CMakeLists.txt simply inherit those,
and no explicit include() needs to be performed. However, the current
structure I have is as follows:

//cmake/common.cmake
//cmake/find_modules/FindTBB.cmake
//adobe_source_libraries/CMakeLists.txt
//adobe_platform_libraries/CMakeLists.txt

In this case, the root cmake directory still must exist. This cannot be
removed. There is reusable CMake code that needs to be centralized in a
location that both ASL and APL can get to, and one level above each of them
is the best place for it that I know of. However, I've been told that no
files can exist in the root (//), so I had to create //cmake/common.cmake
that each of ASL and APL's CMakeLists.txt file must include, which increases
the amount of boiler plate CMake code in each project-specific cmake script
file.

This is one of the major issues we have to tackle. We, as a group, need to
figure out what the best long-term hierarchical structure is for CMake. I
also want to let you guys know that I do have a full time job. What that
means to you is that I am most active on the weekends. However, this mailing
list is extremely low traffic and my biggest bottle neck right now is
getting feedback from the rest of the team. Not to rush, but if you guys
could respond more often (especially on weekends), I would be able to get a
little bit more done. I can only do so much work without thorough
requirements.

Thanks to everyone for reading.