[Dune] migration from auto tools to cake in dune, timetable ?

[Christoph Grüninger]

Hi Benedikt,
concerning your problem on a Mac: Wasn't on Mac this situation with 
libtoolize and glibtoolize? One is from Apple and the other from 
MacPort. Or is this unrelated?
I think Atgeirr tried CMake on Mac but I have never tried it myself. 
Give it a try and report back ;-)

> as it happens times change and I wonder what is the time schedule for
> the migration of dune to cmake ?

Nothing is yet decided. CMake in Dune is experimental. I assume this 
will be discussed at the Developer Meeting in September.

> Thus, my questions, as a long-time user of Dune, should I also switch to
> cmake right now,
> or would you recommend to wait some more time ?

Technically: CMake support is close to the features autotools provide 
for Dune. Currently we miss
- headercheck
- building tar balls is at least untested
- integration into the Dune website is missing
- it is by far less tested

I answer your question with my personal opinion, okay?

The autotools are a ugly pile of outdated programming languages that are 
grown over years and the system is difficult to learn. If you know them 
already and you are ok to work with them, just stick with them. I doubt 
that Dune will stop supporting them within the next two years.

If you can spare a week, give CMake a try and receive an impression. 
Don't throw your working stuff away but keep it running. If you don't 
have the week, stick to the autotools and wait how CMake is pushed in 
the next year.

On the other hand, I have the impression that CMake is used my more and 
more projects, it is easy to learn (be aware, it is still a build system 
that has to be quirky by law of nature), it has some nice features, it 
is faster, and there is even a good support on super computers like 
JuQueen or the Cray machine in Stuttgart.

The problem is, that people who care about the build system (have to) 
know the autotools. Novice developers who would profit from CMake have 
close to no voice. I cannot back up my impression with data but I think 
only these people are interested in CMake that have to deal with build 
system hassles.
Even in my group I was not very successful to popularize the use of 
CMake. Both build systems work equally well for the users and it is not 
them to fix the bugs in the build system.
So without the Dune build system gurus and Joe average Dune user (npi) 
on our side, we have a weak lobby.

Bye
Christoph

-- 
Digital information lasts forever – or five years, whichever comes first.
-- Jeff Rothenberg, 1997
********************************************
CMWR 2014: 9th - 13th June 2014 in Stuttgart
          Please visit www.cmwr14.de
********************************************