Wireshark · Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Update Windows Build Instructions

[Stephen Fisher <sfisher@xxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Jan 05, 2015 at 05:20:27PM +0000, Graham Bloice wrote:

> Yes, use CMake :-)
> 
> There are other cross-platform build solutions such as SCons, but it's 
> just as bad as CMake (or maybe worse, I haven't tried anything other 
> than a toy project).
>
> Adding a dissector to CMake is as simple as it is for nmake with the 
> bonus that it works for both Windows and Linux (and wherever else 
> CMake is used).  Doing anything else with the CMake build system 
> requires a lot of head scratching as getting the required output from 
> the arcane language of CMake files can be a battle.

With such a glowing review as that.. I'm not sure I want to try CMake :)  
Perhaps it would be better to handle the different platform build 
methods ourselves.

> I guess nmake was used in the past as a) it's nearly make, and b) the 
> Visual Studio solution files at the time were horrible undocumented 
> blobs that could only be read by the IDE.  Nowadays they're somewhat 
> documented bloated XML blobs that can be built using msbuild (which is 
> quite nice to use)

Yuck, XML.

> msbuild will also use multiple threads to build so is can be much 
> quicker.  The other big advantage of VS solution files is that it 
> should make it easier for folks to use the IDE debugger.

Indeed.  So what about making a script to read in Makefile.common and 
spitting out those XML files for msbuild?  Or update the msbuild so IDE 
things in those files (if any) aren't reset every time its rebuilt.