Re: Build system considerations

[Nikolaus Waxweiler]

> I'm not sure you realize that what you wrote sounds insensitive and is
> bordering ad-hominen.
> You could have said that you disagree and that this doesn't match your
> experience for example.
> Instead you tone devalues the point you're trying to make.

+1

> A) One of the major features of FreeType is that is can be easily built on
> many many systems (included embedded ones with weird toolchains), and it's
> something I'd like to keep for the core library.
>   In other words, I really want to keep the ability to compile an official
> release of FreeType with "./configure && make". That doesn't mean we have
> to use auto-tools or the current Make-based system though.
>   We may also consider providing CMake scripts to help use of FreeType
> releases into CMake-based projects.

There is a CMake build file already, it is for building a library and
maybe a package only though. Sometimes people try to build a
distribution package from it and run into problems...

>
> B) [...] choosing
> a solution that brings joy is more important than something that could
> support a team of 50 people working on it, or is industry standard.

+1 :)

I generally like the idea of having one nice primary build system and
supporting bare Makefiles for niche platforms.

> so we may consider keeping autotools/libtool as an escape hatch for esoteric 
> systems that still exist, and use something simpler/better for Linux and OS X?

I honestly wonder how many of those esoteric systems are still in use
and want to compile git master.

> Apart from that, it would be easy to write a script to generate the proper 
> compilation database

Ok :) I just thought it was neat that CMake can generate this
automatically during configure and my IDE will just pick it up.