[Discuss] Essentially all free apps will soon be available on Windows

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2007-02-15 21:18-0800 Corey Burger wrote:

> On 2/15/07, Alan W. Irwin <irwin at beluga.phys.uvic.ca> wrote:
>> I am writing this post because there is an unprecedented opportunity now 
>> for
>> free (as in freedom) applications to be ported to windows because of 
>> CMake.
>> Furthermore, I am all for such ports since I strongly believe that once 
>> most
>> typical Linux apps are available on windows, the MS desktop monopoly power
>> will finally start to weaken as a result.
>
> CMake is fair from the magic bullet you claim it is.

Corey, I am curious about what practical experience you have had with CMake
that has lead you to draw that conclusion.  You are the first person I have
ever heard from that didn't like it once they tried it.

> The GNOME
> project, amongst other large projects, have rejected CMake.

If they have some other tool that does as good a job, that is fine.  But that
tool is not autotools.  OTOH, if all they have is autotools, then I expect
Gnome will soon be revisiting that decision since CMake is so much better
even if you want to remain narrowly focussed just on the Linux platform.

I should also mention the example of X.  They switched to autotools in
recent years from something much worse. However, I predict they will migrate
again in they are concerned at all about build times. Autotools-generated
Makefiles invoke the libtool shell script for every compilation and link.
That script turns out to be 8000 lines (!) which adds a substantial latency
to every compilation and link step.

> Further,
> the build system does not save you from cross platform coding and
> dealing with another system.

There I agree with you.  From my observations of what our Windows and Mac OS
X testers/porters had to do for two Linux-originated projects, windows
porting takes roughly twice the effort of Mac OS X porting, but both are
entirely straightforward.

> Further, simply building it on another
> system is not enough. You also have to debug it on that system, a
> massive and time consuming task.

I think your negativity is a bit over the top here.  It is a straightforward
job to port (which includes debugging, BTW) any one component of KDE to
windows.  Also, there are huge economies of scale here. Once you learn what
to do for one component, the remaining ones get much easier.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net); the
Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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