Ach, I've made a career out of not having to know autotools! ./configure &&
make && [sudo] make install were black boxes as far as I was concerned.

So be it, I'll spend some time reading up this weekend and see how far I
get. MSVC integration will become more interesting, but I suppose I can
disable Gnulib for targets that don't actually need it. This is what I get
for dipping my toes in CloudABI and introducing dprintf(), openat() to my
projects :P

Would be nice to offer NetBSD-style packages for MINIX and SmartOS, in
order to make Gnulib easier to install to a standard include path like with
other development libraries.

On Sat, Jan 5, 2019 at 12:31 PM Kamil Dudka <kdudka@redhat.com> wrote:

> On Saturday, January 5, 2019 6:53:06 PM CET Bruno Haible wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Andrew Pennebaker wrote:
> > > Could we improve how gnulib integrates with downstream projects, to
> make
> > > it
> > > easier to work with different build tools? In particular, would be
> helpful
> > > for gnulib to easily work with cmake projects.
> > >
> > > In my case, I have an application that needs openat(), and I already
> have
> > > a
> > > complex cmake configuration that would be difficult to rewrite in
> terms of
> > > autotools.
> >
> > I don't think we will spend time to make gnulib-tool generate cmake
> > configurations.
> >   1. Because the GNU build system is based on Autotools.
> >   2. Because many people say that cmake is a horror to use. [1][2]
>
> That is not an argument.  You can find similar horror stories about
> autotools:
>
>     http://voices.canonical.com/jussi.pakkanen/2011/09/13/autotools/
>
> > But gnulib-tool by design creates a subdirectory, and you can yourself
> >   - add a simple configure.ac to that subdirectory, as outlined in the
> >     documentation [3],
>
> When I needed it 10 years ago, I was able to get around this limitation by
> using the --create-testdir option of gnulib-tool.  It created a directory
> with configure script that (after running make) produced a static library.
> I am not sure if this approach had any side effects, like turning on debug
> build, but I was at least not forced to create configure.ac etc.
>
> Kamil
>
> >   - integrate this subdirectory with cmake through an 'ExternalProject'
> [4].
> >
> > If, during this process, you encounter pain points that require (small)
> > gnulib-tool changes, please come back to us and report them.
> >
> > Bruno
> >
> > [1]
> >
> https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/4flb8z/fighting_through_a_cmake_hell/
> > [2]
> > https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/7yps20/its_time_to_do_cmake_right/
> > [3]
> > https://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/manual/html_node/Initial-import.html
> > [4]
> >
> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5971921/building-a-library-using-autoto
> > ols-from-cmake
>
>
>

-- 
Cheers,
Andrew