[Python-Dev] Evaluated cmake as an autoconf replacement

[Christian Heimes]

Jeffrey Yasskin wrote:

>  1. It can autogenerate the Visual Studio project files instead of
> needing them to be maintained separately

I'm familiar with the Unix and the Windows build system. More than a
year ago I went to a great deal of work to migrate the Windows builds
from VS 7.1 to VS 9.0. I'm in doubt that any automatic tool can create
configuration files that are as good as our hand made files.

The VS project files support debug, non debug and profile guided
optimization builds for X86 and AMD64 including cross compilation of
AMD64 binaries. The project files are using multiple inheritance to
avoid duplication of options.
The differences between Windows and Unix builds are fairly large, too.
On Windows lots of modules are built in and the remaining Python
extensions are build with VS directly. On Unix most modules are build as
shared libraries using distutils and setup.py.

In my opinion any change to an automated system is a waste of precious
developer times and makes our Windows support worse.

Christian