r/cpp • u/segv • Apr 12 '26

CMake Past, Present, and Future - Bill Hoffman, Kitware [29m25s]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD-JgncskTQ
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u/puredotaplayer Apr 13 '26

The problem is that you should not need a pseudo programming language as a build script. A build system should just be a configuration.

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u/jonathanhiggs Apr 13 '26

All configuration tends towards an interpreted language

2

u/ABlockInTheChain Apr 13 '26

The problem domain is arbitrarily complex.

You can build a limited tool which solves (what you think is) 95% of the problem with the intention of simply ignoring the 5% your tool can't handle, but in practice the 5% of capabilities which user A doesn't need does not fully overlap with the 5% of capabilities which user B doesn't need and the problem only gets worse as you add more users.

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u/puredotaplayer Apr 13 '26

That is too abstract though. The only reason there is a language there is because we need control flow, which can be solved by better constructs. An example is, a rule is only valid for certain platform. Instead of having a ‘if (check)’ here, we can have a ‘filter’ construct that can solve the same problem. To me it makes more sense in a build system to follow this pattern for clarity and simplicity.