CMake replacing Autotools?

[Thomas Stüfe]

Hi Christoph,

On Fri, Mar 19, 2021 at 12:01 AM Christoph Grüninger <foss at grueninger.de>
wrote:

> Hi Magnus,
>
> for sure, I am going to do CMake cheerleading.
>
> I think OpenJDK would profit from a change to CMake:
>
> 1. Less tools required for building: CMake + gmake/Ninja/msbuild/Xcode
> instead of Autotools and all the related Linux/Unix tools, that are
> somewhat alien to Windows and OS X. Visual Studio even provides its own
> CMake.
>

Note that CMake is missing on a number of proprietary Unices (AIX, HPUX)
whereas Autotools are universally available and just work; on Windows via
Cygwin, on Mac via Fink/homebrew to Mac. So I think the argument is
actually the reverse.


>
> 2. More choices to actually build the project: Use integrated build
> tools of IDEs (Visual Studio, Xcode) or use Ninja, which is faster than
> gmake
>
>
Is gmake really where we lose time? Did you analyze this or is this just an
assumption? I would have thought it's things like single threaded jmod,
jlink, and subprocess spawning.

Cheers, Thomas