58 lines
2.5 KiB
ReStructuredText
58 lines
2.5 KiB
ReStructuredText
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About Autocmake
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===============
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Building libraries and executables from sources can be a complex task. Several
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solutions exist to this problem: GNU Makefiles is the traditional approach.
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Today, CMake is one of the trendier alternatives which can generate Makefiles
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starting from a file called ``CMakeLists.txt``. Consider Autocmake a
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``CMakeLists.txt``-generator. Autocmake is a collection of scripts which
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compose well tested CMake building blocks into a CMake project and generates
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``CMakeLists.txt`` as well as ``setup.py``, which serves as a front-end to
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``CMakeLists.txt``. All this is done based on a lightweight ``autocmake.cfg``
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file::
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python update.py --self
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| fetches Autocmake |
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| infrastructure |
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v Developer maintaining
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autocmake.cfg Autocmake
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| python update.py .. |
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v v
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CMakeLists.txt (and setup.py front-end)
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| python setup.py |
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| which invokes CMake |
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v User of the code
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Makefile (or something else) |
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| make |
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v v
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Build/install/test targets
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Our main motivation to create Autocmake as a CMake framework library and
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CMake module composer was to simplify CMake code transfer between codes. We got
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tired of manually diffing and copy-pasting boiler-plate CMake code and watching
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it diverge while maintaining the CMake infrastructure in a growing number of
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scientific projects which typically have very similar requirements:
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- Fortran and/or C and/or C++ support
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- Tuning of compiler flags
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- Front-end script for the CMake-unaware user (setup.py)
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- Support for parallelization: MPI, OMP, CUDA
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- Math libraries: BLAS, LAPACK
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Our other motivation for Autocmake was to make it easier for developers who do
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not know CMake to provide a higher-level entry point to CMake.
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Autocmake is a chance to provide a well documented and tested set of CMake
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plug-ins. With this we wish to give also users of codes the opportunity to
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introduce the occasional tweak without the need to dive deep into CMake
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documentation.
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