[Rock-dev] Rock.cmake

[Sylvain Joyeux]

I've made a page 
(http://rock.opendfki.de/wiki/WikiStart/Toolchain/CMakeMacros) that 
lists some of the current differences between Rock.cmake and 
UseOrocos-RTT.cmake.

My feeling is that Rock.cmake is a 'more raw' handling of the problem 
than UseOrocos.

What I don't like in UseOrocos (this is meant as a discussion, not 
bashing of UseOrocos):

  * auto-dependencies from manifest.xml
    Gut feeling: too much magic -
    Rationale: people *will* have to add other dependencies that are
    either not pkg-config-oriented, not listed in the manifest, or for
    which the pkg-config file has a different name than the manifest.xml
    dependency (think osdeps). They will therefore have to remember to
    both add the package/osdeps in manifest.xml *and* add dependency in
    the CMake. I would rather have only one workflow (i.e. always add in
    the cmake file and in the manifest)
  * pkg-config file generation
    Rationale: history showed that people need to be able to customize
    their pkg-config file. I believe that the way it is done in
    Rock.cmake right now is better (have a template that is given to
    configure_file to get more or less the same kind of behaviour than
    UseOrocos by default, but allows for customization)
  * a lot of RTT-specific things (but that's not necessarily such a bad
    thing as long as RTT is not required).

What I would propose, is:

  * resolve our differences and get a common set of base macros (like
    robotbuild.cmake or something).
  * add one rock-specific higher-level layers (for instance
    rock_standard_layout() would still exist) and an orocos-specific one
    (typegen, ...).
  * either copy these macros in two places (RTT in the orocos toolchain
    and base/types in rock) or create a common package. The resulting
    two files (Rock.cmake and UseOrocos-RTT.cmake) could live in the
    same place than with robotbuild.cmake.

Thoughts ?
-- 
Sylvain Joyeux (Dr.Ing.)
Space & Security Robotics

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