Discussion: How should we support cmake?

[Zeioth]

cmake is the most extended building system for C and C++ projects, and many real world projects use it.

But the issue of implementing support for cmake is that because it is SO flexible, it doesn't provide the standards we need to implement it.

Standards we need

• A standard way to build the project.
• A standard way to run the project.

Standards supported by cmake

• Running cmake will build the project

Standards unsupported by cmake

• An standardized way to run the main program of the resulting project.

I'm not a professional C/C++ dev myself, so ideas from the community are welcome. If there is a clear path for implementing support for cmake now, or in the future, we can add it.

Aditional questions

Should we add it only to C/C++ where is the standard building system, or to some other language too?

[Zeioth]

Proposal 1 → REJECTED, TOO NAIVE

We could assume cmake has the options

• build cmake -S . -B build --build build
• run: cmake --build . --target run

That way users can create this options in their cmake file and be able to build/run their programs.

Pros

• C/C++ can build/run their programs.
• This overcome the fact that cmake creates a Makefile, so the current option make Makefile can't be used to run cmake itself.

Cons

We assume the user has a run --target

Proposal 2 → REJECTED, ADDS EXTRA COMPLEXITY TO THE MAIN MENU

A C/C++ programmer could just use Run makefile. This builds the project by default.

We could provide the new options Run makefile run and Run makefile and makefile run. This would allow users to have separate commands to build and run. This is also very powerful as it is a simple way to let users run anything they want, while keeping things simple.

This is also an approach that could be used for any project and language.

[Zeioth]

Proposal 3

Create the plugin Makeit.nvim → COMPLETED

This still require the user to manually run cmake once. But after that he can interact with the Makefile it generates. Also, this plugin address many other common scenarios. So for now it improves the situation.

Now the question is, should we integrate this into compiler.nvim, or keep the current Makefile behavior of just running the default target?

[Zeioth]

The final implementation has been quite more refined than the initial proposals:

• We now parse the options defined in CMakeLists.txt and display them on Compiler.nvim