Subject: Re: [boost] cmake target and binary name mangling
From: P F (pfultz2_at_[hidden])
Date: 2017-07-23 23:39:33
> On Jul 23, 2017, at 5:23 PM, Niall Douglas via Boost <boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
>> I would suggest that the CMake build for Boost should do things
>> following the standard practices for CMake, and be as simple as possible.
>
> I appreciate everything you've just said and the time you took to say
> it. But quite frankly, you're plain wrong:
>
> 1. The mangling pattern should be published with a formal regex for
> parsing it. It should never, ever change.
>
> 2. cmake lets external cmake override binary naming arbitrarily, so if
> you really want the binary to be called foo.so, you can go ahead and do
> that no problem because you know the mangling of the cmake target names,
> so you know which target sets to set properties for.
>
> 3. If you're working outside of cmake, cmake export writes config files
> which are of stable layout and which can be easily regex scanned for the
> name of the binary you need. Any bit of scripting can do this, even
> Windows batch. I've done this countless times, it's a really nice
> feature of cmake.
>
> So everything you just said is all irrelevant. Meanwhile, there are
> *enormous* end user gains to mangling the binary name.
Then why does no linux distro do this? Even when they support compiling for multiple platforms. I think the standard way is to use separate directories instead of using encoded name, which is very much relevant and current practice.