[x265] x265: Questions and comments from an outsider

[Steve Borho]

On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 4:21 AM, Derek Buitenhuis <
derek.buitenhuis at gmail.com> wrote:

> > cmake does have support for install rules, I just haven't made any yet
> (we didn't have a real deployable static library until yesterday).
>
> Don't forget uninstall! ;)
>

There were instructions in the cmake FAQ for making uninstall rules, but
they are, ahem less than optimal.


>
> > Today our CMake scripts support cc+make, 3 msvc releases, msys,
> icl+nmake, and Xcode.
>
> I wanted to ask about soething related to this:
>
> What's with the build/* directories? These seem rather silly
> to me, when proper builds should be done out-of-tree, i.e.:
>
> $ hg clone <...>
> $ mkdir x265_build
> $ cd x265_build
> $ cmake -G "something" ../x265
> $ make


It's just convenience for Windows developers.  If you have VC9, VC10,
and/or VC11 installed, you can just click on the applicable batch file,
select the build options you want from the GUI, then double-click on the
generated solution file and build it.

Without the various directories of batch files, you would have to scour
your start menu for the appropriate compiler's terminal shell launcher, and
then run cmake from within that environment; or explicitly tell CMake the
name of the MSVC generator you want to use; and the naming convention for
those has changed between VC9 and VC11.


> > Clearly cmake has more breadth and there is overlap between the two, but
> I also understand that the vast bulk of open source is autoconf based and
> so if adding autoconf is a precondition for integration into other
> transcode tools then I'll definitely take a patch which introduces autoconf
> support and maintain it to the best of my abilities.
>
> I think it's a question or portability and usability. There's e.g.
> no analogue for 'configure --help' in cmake. Also large concern
> with cmake, for me anyway, is that it's a very very big pain to
> make it handle cross-compiling correctly... I've formed this
> opinion after having worked on the Yocto Project / Poky Linux /
> OpenEmbedded projects as my day job previously.
>
> Maybe this has changed?
>

I'll concede the point on portability and cross-compiling.  Though JEEB did
report his success with it:

https://bitbucket.org/multicoreware/x265/wiki/CrossCompile

the config --help analog in cmake is cmake-gui (Qt) or ccmake (ncurses)

> It will be a constant source of friction, having two build systems, but
> other projects manage to deal with it.
>
> I will wait to see how cmake turns out before submitting a patch
> for autotools.


Yeah, I suspect an autotools script will arrive the first time someone
butts heads with CMake and decides it would be less work to just add an
autoconf script.

--
Steve Borho
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