Re: Software Building Status. A Growing Annoyance.

In comp.os.linux.misc Nux Vomica <nv@linux.rocks> wrote:

On 25 Jun 2025 09:06:52 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

The CMake developers ignored requests for an equivalent to
"./configure --help" early on, willfully making the transition
difficult for software builders.

 
Actually, Cmake does have an equivalent.  Here are the steps.
 
1) Unpack a source file.
 
2) Create a "build" directory in the source root and then
"cd build."
 
3) Execute "cmake -LAH .. "
 
This will produce a LONG list of options.  (See the output
for Pan below.)

That looks similar to what I've been doing which is reading
CMakeCache.txt. Hard to read with none of the sorting between
different types of options like you get with "./configure --help".
More like editing Makefiles manually, and even projects where you
have to do that usually write more detail in the comments before
variables than many of these CMake projects tend to have.

This comment in your example is _really_ descriptive:

// Path to a program.
CMAKE_TAPI:FILEPATH=CMAKE_TAPI-NOTFOUND

So it didn't find "a program". Great, thanks...

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