If people want a tower of babel set of languages that can drive CMake,
they can do it now. Just write most of your build system in X, tell
your users they have to install CMake and X. Then use the powerful
language X to generate simple CMake files. (where X is python, tcl,
perl, lua, or what ever someone likes.) For the most part the actual
build part of CMake is pretty simple:
add_library(foo ...)
add_executable(bar ...)
target_link_libraries(bar foo)
Even find modules could be written in Lua or some other language then
called with execute_process. The trick is the people that are building
that package will need CMake and X. The original intent of having CMake
create it's own language was to have minimal dependencies on CMake
itself. To build CMake, you need a C++ compiler and its native build
tools. Since CMake was developed to build C++ programs, this seemed
like a good dependency. Having to install CMake on the system you want
to build on is often a show stopper for people looking at CMake compared
to autotools. Having to install CMake, and X, Y, or maybe Z would be
even worst.
Lua is interesting since it is small and easy to embed. I am still not
sure it is worth the effort. However, the idea of having multiple
languages is IMO horrible. Unless all of those languages are built in
and delivered with the one CMake binary it will turn CMake projects that
use these extra languages into a pain in the neck to build. You will
have what I like to call the "easter egg hunt" to build packages. Users
will have to install several packages just to build one package.
Also, backwards compatibility is something we take very seriously. If
someone picks CMake as a build tool, we have to respect that choice and
try our best not to break that project. There are very large projects
that have many lines of CMake code in them. People have put a great
deal of effort into creating those files. If they don't have the time
to re-write in a new language, I don't blame them. I also won't try to
force them to do it, by obsoleting the current language. So, we might
have two official languages someday, but no more than that.
If you want to use other languages, then use execute_process inside your
CMake files, and make sure to tell your uses what they have to install
to build your package.
-Bill
-Bill
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