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

[Benedikt Oswald]

Dear Dune,

as always, thank you very much for your support, it is excellent!

I here describe the approach to solve the problem.
It seems to be related very much to Mac OS X 10.8.x

In fact, I managed to solve the problem by setting the search path for aclocal by setting:

export ACLOCAL_PATH=$HOME/extlib/libtool/2.4.2/gcc/4.8.1/share/aclocal:$ACLOCAL_PATH


Since in Mac OS X 10.8.4 the autotools are not installed when installing Xcode from Apple,
one has to install these tools oneself. 

Then, in order to get them running properly, one also has to set the search path for the
M4 macro processor properly. There is no need, however, to install the autotools
with the same prefix; anyway, that does not appear a good practice to me.

Greetings, Benedikt


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Dr. sc. techn. Benedikt Oswald - first engineer - LSPR AG - phone - +41 43 366 90 74
Technoparkstrasse 1, CH-8005 Zürich, benedikt.oswald at lspr.ch
"Passion is required for any great work, and for the Revolution passion and audacity are required in big doses." 
Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, Letter to his parents.
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On Jul 31, 2013, at 9:02 AM, Christoph Grüninger <christoph.grueninger at iws.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote:

> 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 The autotools are a ugly pile of outdated programming languages that are grown over years and the system is difficult to learn.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
> 
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