Re: CMake and Lua

["Brandon Van Every" <bvanevery@...>]

On Feb 12, 2008 11:39 AM, Thiago Bastos <tabastos@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, I agree with those points, and I'm glad to hear that you are
> considering Lua.
> I was just trying to motivate you to work towards a more Lua-ish design :-)

I don't speak for Kitware, but my take on their attitude is, they need
to see proof of paradigmatic advantages.  Many off-the-shelf scripting
languages claim that they'd offer some great feature for a build
system, whether it's "ultra-configurability," object orientation, or
some other programming paradigm.  I think Kitware is open to the
change if the value of the change can be demonstrated.  They have
listened to debate on the subject, they haven't dismissed it out of
hand, they've prototyped the doability.  But the argument for
paradigmatic advantages has not been made.  I don't think they're
going to budge until it is made.  The only way I see to make the
argument, is to point to another build tool that's already doing
something "more paradigmatically advanced" than CMake script is doing.
 i.e. that threatens to be a much better build tool than CMake over
the long haul.  Abstract ideas don't count here; they need to see
results from the real world.

I've been looking around in various places to see if the results
exist.  Ruby Rake and its derivatives are probably the next port of
call.  I am not seeing the results in the available Lua-based build
tools.  My perception is that they've only been used for projects of
100K LOC or less.  For small to medium projects, the choice of build
system doesn't matter very much.  There's not enough of a build system
to worry about lofty programming paradigms.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every