[gmx-developers] GCC Versions

[Erik Lindahl]

Hi,

On Dec 17, 2008, at 10:12 AM, David van der Spoel wrote:

> Erik Lindahl wrote:
>> Hi,
>> I'm considering switching the build system to CMake (in the short  
>> perspective we'd support both this and autoconf), so in that case  
>> we could do it through CTest and CDash. This way any user can do  
>> automated testing on their pet platform and report the results to  
>> the test dashboard, where it will show up in red if some tests break.
>
> [kahlo:~] % cmake
> cmake: Command not found.
>
> This is going to make many people unhappy...

Yes, that is the reason it isn't an obvious switch, and why we need to  
support two build environments for a while.
On the other hand, as both you and others have noticed it is a major  
pain to edit autoconf/automake files. CMake has some really beautiful  
features, and comes integrated with package-building, testing, and  
testing statistics modules. Not only does it support both UNIX &  
Windows, but with a single command you can e.g. get it to generate a  
complete set of build files for XCode (or any particular version of  
Visual Studio).

Also, for "vanilla" users we should get back to providing binaries -  
that will likely be done more frequently when the package-building  
(CPack supports e.g. rpm, deb, Mac disk images, windows installers) is  
built into the default makefile environment.

Cheers,

Erik