Re: [ft-devel] CMake build system: some proposed changes

[Nikolaus Waxweiler]

> I do not understand the problem. I do not think a user of our build
> system is an expert who packages it for distribution. Our user is
> likely happy that very few FreeType dependencies are autodetected. An
> expert packager will probably add extra flags and override any
> dependency. More so every expert has his own opinion and we cannot
> accommodate them all.

Mh, ok. Maybe I need to give an example of disabling all dependencies 
in the comments.

> Please do not screw average Joe the user. I consider there is only one
> problem with CMake: it edits ftoption.h in one direction, which is
> weird.

I think it only feels weird because it's a different approach to 
configuring a project. What CMake can and Meson will do is make you use 
different out-of-source build folders for different configurations. 
I.e. you can have `build-debug`, `build-release-no-deps`, 
`build-debug-bundled-zlib`, `build-debug-system-zlib`, etc. 
side-by-side without them littering over each other. The workflow is 
that you create and configure the project into these build folders and 
then not touch what's inside. This is different to the lol-whatever 
approach usually taken by autotools-like build systems and is why I was 
thinking of option-alizing all of ftoptions.h. That can also be done by 
hand before configuring a build folder, so... meh.

> What about making cmake emit a report after execution, similar to the
> `configure' script, which also lists the cmake CLI options to switch
> the corresponding features on or off?
>
> After cmake execution a hint could be printed that guides people what
> to do if further tweaks are necessary.

Sounds good.