Re: WIP: About CMake v2

On Mon, Jan 30, 2017 at 10:26 AM, Peter Eisentraut
<peter(dot)eisentraut(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
> On 1/30/17 1:28 AM, Andres Freund wrote:
>> Given that fact, I just don't buy why it's a good idea to not also
>> replace autoconf initially.
>
> Well, I find it a bit scary. If you do the big switch all at once, then
> you will have to dedicate the following 3 months to fixing complaints
> from developers and build farmers.

I agree with that. I think replacing the Windows build system first
and then the non-Windows build system later is a better plan than
replacing both at the same time.

But also, I'm not really sure whether this conversion makes sense. I
mean, any build system is going to require some work, and accordingly
our present build systems require some work. cmake will require
different work, but not necessarily less. The current system has a
long history; we pretty much know it works. Switching will inevitably
break some things. Maybe we'll end up better off in the long term,
but maybe we won't. Things are pretty good now, so it seems like it
would be easy for them to get worse rather than better. If nothing
else, everybody who has to learn the new system either to use it for
development or because they are doing packaging will have to do some
amount of extra work as a result of any switch.

I do agree that - in theory - one build system is better than two.
But two well-tested, reliable build systems could easily be better
than one system with a bunch of problems. And the points downthread
about our two existing systems being not entirely separate are on
point, too.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company