Here is a spin-off topic from this thread which I believe may be of general interest.
Bill Hoffman contacted me off list about the possibility of testing cmake with a build of a rapidly changing CMake corresponding to the tip of your release branch or possibly one of your development branches AND a corresponding build of a slowly changing PLplot (say change it once per release of PLplot) for each such CMake version. That is a good idea because the PLplot build is fast. For example, the build of the "all" target (including all our standard examples for our supported compiled languages) was completed in only 1 minute 40 seconds (with the aid of ccache) in a recent "make all" test. Even more importantly despite this quick build, the CMake-based build system for PLplot (which we have been developing for the last decade) is quite complex. That is, that build system has to find many soft dependencies of PLplot (almost entirely generated by our various optional device drivers), configure the build of our ~5 libraries, configure the build of the PLplot bindings for our ~10 supported computer languages, configure the build of ~30 standard examples written in each of our supported computer languages for the subset of those languages which are compiled, configure the build for ~15 PLplot device drivers (typically configured as shared objects or DLL's that are dynamically loaded by the core PLplot library if/when needed but another configuration is also possible where the device code is compiled directly into our core library), and configure many separate test targets as well as ctest examples. Because of these excellent PLplot project characteristics for CMake testing purposes, Alex Neundorf set up a combined CMake build and PLplot build test nearly a decade ago, but I assume that no longer exists (although I have asked Bill to search for it, and maybe Alex can comment as well on that CMake history back near the time when the earth was still cooling. :-) ). In any case, the ctest and dashboard server facilities we have now are much better than they were a decade ago, and I am consulting with Bill about the best way to use those facilities properly to set up a new version of Alex's test. And when that nightly test (currently in the very early planning stages) consisting of a CMake build + PLplot build goes live, I think it will be a noticeable improvement in the CMake testing process that will benefit not only the CMake project, but also the PLplot project. Anyhow, Bill and I both hope this test will very much reduce or eliminate instances like the present one where a CMake issue first introduced in 3.8.0 RC's somehow slipped through the cracks of all the normal continuous automatic testing of CMake (see new test suggestion for UseSWIG.cmake in my previous post in this thread). Of course, I am partially responsible for this situation as well because my near-constant testing of PLplot typically occurs for a fixed version of CMake that I rarely have time to change since such change does require a time-consuming build of CMake. Fortunately, the rarety of my CMake version changes used for my PLplot testing will no longer be a problem when the planned continuous integration test goes live so I am really looking forward to that. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ -- Powered by www.kitware.com Please keep messages on-topic and check the CMake FAQ at: http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/CMake_FAQ Kitware offers various services to support the CMake community. For more information on each offering, please visit: CMake Support: http://cmake.org/cmake/help/support.html CMake Consulting: http://cmake.org/cmake/help/consulting.html CMake Training Courses: http://cmake.org/cmake/help/training.html Visit other Kitware open-source projects at http://www.kitware.com/opensource/opensource.html Follow this link to subscribe/unsubscribe: http://public.kitware.com/mailman/listinfo/cmake-developers