[Bf-committers] Removing Build Systems

[Andrea Weikert]

+1 from me!

Benoit Bolsee schrieb:
> Being able to run debug build in the MSVC environment is a sine qua non
> condition for me to participate in Blender development. Thus I cannot
> agree with people voting for keeping scons as the only build system.  It
> has been suggested that scons could generate the cmake files
> automatically. It's an interesting idea but don't know if it is
> possible.
>
>   
So far neither the cmake generated projectfiles for debug nor the scons 
debug build work well when
debugging with MSVC and so far nobody has stepped up to work on this. In 
the past we have already
found a few issues that were reported by the MSVC debugger that were 
missed on the other platforms
and could be solved quickly because of an existing reliable debug build.
In this I agree with Benoit that we need to have a reliable build system 
for MSVC, which are the
MSVC projectfiles at the moment. As far as I know, cmake has an issue 
still with linking the correct
Python dlls in Debug, it tries to link Python25.lib instead of 
Python25_d.lib, which has to be fixed
manually each time.
> So far I've been maintaining the MSVC project files in trunk with the
> help of Andrea. However, whenever I add files to the projects, I always
> add them to the other build system too, otherwise I get users (and
> platform maintainers) yelling about build problems in the next minute.
> Note that the opposite never happens: when you guys add files to
> Blender, I add them to the MSVC projects files without complaining.
>
>   
Same her :). I have usually updated the projectfiles as soon as I saw 
files were added unless I couldn't
get a reliable build because of library linking issues like in the past 
two weeks (which should be fixed now).
> That has been working not too badly until now but I agree with Brecht,
> it's a waste of time. If cmake can generate good quality project files,
> also in debug mode, and deal correctly with user options and libraries
> (it seems a bit stubborn about that), then I'd be happy to drop
> maintaining MSVC project files for the benefit of cmake. 
>
>   
Agreed here too. I have in the past added a few files the cmake build 
system, but I definitely
don't know enough yet to feel comfortable maintaining it. Unfortunately 
at the moment my time is a bit
limited too and the time I have I would rather spend on 2.5 development 
instead of learning another
build system. This is also why maintaining the projectfiles usually was 
much faster for me, especially
when it was only adding a few files.

But I have wasted quite some time on a few issues in the past too, 
notably in the past two weeks to fix linking
issues with the OpenExr libraries. But since these issues would be 
exactly the same if cmake generates a
correct debug build,  since it is basically the same issue as with the 
Python libs mentioned above.
> Generally I find cmake quite good and it deserves to be an official,
> well maintained build system. Cmake can create native build files, so it
> can replace Makefile and MSVC project files. Personnaly I think it could
> replace scons, but that's another story.
>
> My 2c.
> /benoit
>
>   
The biggest issue in using cmake is at the moment the lack of a 
developer knowledgeable enough to maintain it
across the several platforms and compilers. Given that I'd be happy to 
use it.

Andrea