[Trilinos-Users] Updates on Trilinos+CMake

Ali - saveez at hotmail.com
Sun Sep 28 17:16:29 MDT 2008


Ross,

Many thanks for the information. I have been working with CMake for quite a long time, and one may find me biased to answer your questions. So, I quote Kevin Long's Sundance FAQ about autotools:

'Why do you use the Autotools for configuration?

'I detest the autotools -- as a developer, I find them extremely cumbersome to work with, and as a user I find them finicky and near-impossible to debug when things go wrong -- but for better or worse they are the de facto standard for configuring software on Unix-like systems. In particular, they are used by Trilinos. Because Sundance is built on top of Trilinos, using a common configuration system was a logical choice. My apologies; I don't like it either.'

A couple of moths ago I ported Trilinos+Sundance to MinGW which is currently the only best option for native windows binaries and I did suffer the same symptoms described by Kevin. Personally I find the use of CMake in Trilinos to to offer:

(1) Easy portability and native binaries.

(2) Opening up the possibility of *automatically* wrapping c/c++ code to languages supported by SWIG. This option is still experimental, but we have verified it by wrapping the huge Insight Toolkit library into python and java (www.itk.org, code.google.com/p/wrapitk/).

(3) The choice of working under the favourite IDE.

(4) Practical debugging.

Would you estimate that full support of CMake will not be available until September 2009? Could you describe the main problems slowing down the CMake progress?


-Ali

> 
> Hello Ali,
> 
> There is some support for Cmake in Trilinos 9.0 but it is limited to just the packages Teuchos and Epetra for the most part.
> 
> We may provide full support for Cmake in the next major release of Trilinos and indeed the Cmake system in that case would completely replace the current autotools-based system down the line.
> 
> We are currently conducting a detailed evaluation of how use and adapt Cmake for use as the Trilinos build system and testing infrastructure.  We will publish a technical report about the outcome of the evaluation of Trilinos/Cmake in the coming months.
> 
> Would Cmake support be a significant advantage for you and other Trilinos users?  If so, can you describe why Trilinos switching to Cmake would make your work easier and/or more productive?
> 
> Would the Trilinos user community welcome Trilinos totally switching to Cmake and dropping the current autotools-based system in the next major release of Trilinos?
> 
> We are trying to determine what route to go and we are interested in what the general Trilinos user community thinks about this issue.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> - Ross
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> Dr. Roscoe A. Bartlett
> Senior Member of the Technical Staff
> Trilinos Software Engineering Technologies and Integration Lead
> Sandia National Laboratories
> Phone: (505) 275-6147
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: trilinos-users-bounces at software.sandia.gov
>> [mailto:trilinos-users-bounces at software.sandia.gov] On Behalf Of Ali -
>> Sent: Sunday, September 28, 2008 10:20 AM
>> To: trilinos-users at software.sandia.gov
>> Subject: [Trilinos-Users] Updates on Trilinos+CMake
>>
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Could someone provide an update for the use of CMake in
>> Trilinos? I remember the support was supposed to be available
>> this October, is this plan still on?
>>
>>
>> -Ali
>> _________________________________________________________________
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> 

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