On 3/06/2016 13:26, Louis Dionne wrote:
If I understand correctly, however, then I might be inflexible but having a CMake file in the build/ directory is still a major annoyance, as it disturbs the usual CMake workflow. The build/ directory is normally used for products, and as such it contains no source files. This means that we can't put build/ in the .gitignore file, and that we can't simply delete the build/ directory to clean things up. That disturbs the usual CMake workflow, and I don't think this is acceptable.
You can't use (libroot)/build as the cmake output directory anyway, since it includes source files (at least jamfiles, if nothing else) -- and since cmake lacks the ability to clean its output, you have to delete the directory to do so. To me, logical choices seem to be one of the following: 1. Use (libroot)/build/build as the cmake output directory. In this case, you should put *no* cmake files into (libroot), and the "main" cmake file into (libroot)/build (possibly supporting files elsewhere). You can now use *exactly* the normal cmake build incantations as you normally would; you just cd into (libroot)/build before "mkdir build; cd build; cmake .." etc. 2. Use some other directory as the cmake output directory. In this case it is possibly convenient to put a cmake file into (libroot), but TBH I don't really see the point. You have to point cmake at both the output and source directories anyway -- there's very little difference between any of these: cd $libroot; mkdir output; cd output; cmake .. cd $libroot; mkdir output; cd output; cmake ../build cd ~; mkdir libbuild; cd libbuild; cmake $libroot/build (I assume that you're not suggesting that Boost libraries stop putting files into (libroot)/build so that it can be used as the output directory. Boost used that name before CMake AFAIK, and CMake doesn't require it while Boost does.)