Hey gang,
Another thing we discussed at EclipseCon and there seems to
be at least a little momentum behind it is a redo of the build
system. It’s gone a long way in probably the wrong direction
since I started with the build model 10 years ago or so. But we
continue to struggle without someone maintaining it on a regular
basis. We really need to simplify it so we can at least jump in
quickly and fix anything that goes wrong there.
I think we’re a lock that the June 2016 release will be a
major CDT release, 9.0, which gives us a great opportunity to
get this done. I just want to make sure we do it as a community
and not repeat the mistakes of the past. I’ll set up a wiki
where we can capture ideas, but we should really start by
agreeing on a number of requirements.
To that end, here’s my quick thoughts on where I’d like to
see us go:
- Make it easy to support alternative build systems like
Autotools, CMake, Qt’s qmake, Boost.Build, etc.
- Make sure we can get what we need for the parsers out of any
build system.
- Make sure we support external builds. You shouldn’t need to
start up Eclipse to build.
- And that means removing the internal builder (sad, I dreamed
of that but it’s too much of a burden now)
- Support Visual Studio/Xcode style build settings. Not ever
user knows how to write build files.
The big one is the internal builder. Much of the build model
was created to support it. If we remove it as a requirement, we
can probably simplify a lot of things. But it does mean we need
an external build system to be present on the users machine
which will be a challenge on Windows.
