… not understanding KDE’s move to CMake as build system. I’ve been using it quite a bit now, for rubytag++ and ruby-hunspell, the first because I wanted to try CMake, the latter because both Ruby and Hunspell work on Windows and I wanted them tow ork there, and after all a Ruby extension is a quite simple thing.
Luca voiced his concern about the improper usage of CMake that is being done out there. I think the main issue is that up to now, CMake was being used only by a couple of minimal projects (like my extensions) and by the Work-In-Progress KDE4 development, both of which have not much public so might not show their problems. I think this is the main issue with alternative build systems, you might like them when they are used for special things or in-development things, but when they hit mainstream the problems surface quickly. The software that caused the stir now is Debian’s cdrkit, the cdrecord fork.
Now, not only I agree with all of Luca’s points, but I’d like also to add that I feel CMake maintainers (that’s Kitware, a company) cares not that much about other uses of their software than the ones they are paid for. I’ve submitted a new FindRuby module to fix their own that’s just crap in the literal sense (it hardcodes i386-linux path for Ruby), but no comment from them up to now, even if also KDE developers have their own FindRuby module.
Finally, more I use CMake, more I feel nostalgic for autoconf’s M4 macros; at least there you separate the parameters with something (the command) rather than with whitespaces and naming conventions.
So, I’ll repeat my “autotools forever” cry now and always. CMake is not a good replacement; it’s not a replacement at all.