[Help-gsl] CMake build support for GSL

[address@hidden]

Hi All,

I've implemented CMake <http://www.cmake.org/> build support for GSL. As
you probably know CMake is a popular alternative to autotools. It is used
in many open-source projects including large ones such as KDE, LLVM and
Blender (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMake#Notable_applications). I won't
go into details describing benefits of CMake, there is plenty of
information on the web, e.g. this article <http://lwn.net/Articles/188693/>.
My particular interest was in building GSL with the Visual C++ compiler.

The CMake build script for GSL is available at
*https://github.com/ampl/gsl/blob/master/CMakeLists.txt
<https://github.com/ampl/gsl/blob/master/CMakeLists.txt>*. It's just a
single file that needs to be put in the top GSL directory.

I've ported most of the autoconf platform checks to CMake and implemented
extraction of various information such as version and lists of source files
from autoconf and automake files. This way the CMake script requires little
maintenance and can co-exist with the current GSL automake build system.
Changes to the automake files like adding files and additional
subdirectories holding convenience libraries don't require changes to
CMake files
unless there is a modification of the project structure. The config.h file
produced by CMake is identical to the one produced by the configure script
to make checking the consistency of platform checks easy.

Out-of-tree builds and tests are supported. I've tested the script on Linux
and MacOS X with gcc and on Windows with Visual C++ (both nmake and Visual
Studio builds work).

P.S. I sent this email to gsl-discuss some time ago, but it didn't come
through, so I'm copying it here.

Best regards,
Victor