Re: Is a modern build system acceptable for older platforms

Geoff Winkless <pgsqladmin@geoff.dj> writes:
> Being blunt, unless I've missed the point all the arguments I've read so
> far for cmake seem to be advantages for the developers, not the users. As
> developers who put in your time you are of course entitled to make your
> lives easier but I'm just making the counterpoint that if you do so at the
> expense of your users you lose a certain amount of goodwill. It's up to you
> all how much that matters.

Yeah, one of the things that I find to be a very significant turn-off in
these proposals is that they'd break the "configure; make; make install"
ritual that so many people are accustomed to.  User-unfriendly decisions
like cmake's approach to configuration switches (-D? really?) are icing
on top of what's already an un-tasty cake.

What we do internally is our business, but these things are part of the
package's API in a real sense.  Changing them has a cost, one that's not
all borne by us.

            regards, tom lane