[debhelper-devel] Bug#895044: debhelper: add support for Ninja with CMake

[Niels Thykier]

On Fri, 06 Apr 2018 10:08:24 -0400 Kyle Edwards
<kyle.edwards at kitware.com> wrote:
> Package: debhelper
> Version: 11.1.6
> Severity: wishlist
> 
> Dear Maintainer,
> 
> Large projects which use CMake, such as VTK, take a long time to build
> with the Makefile generator, and see significant build time improvements
> when being built with the Ninja generator instead. Please consider
> adding support for using the Ninja generator with CMake. Perhaps
> something like:
> 
> $ dh --buildsystem=cmakeninja
> 
> I realize this may be tricky given how the buildsystems are implemented
> in debhelper. I don't know much about Perl, but if it supports multiple
> inheritance, would it be possible to make a class like "cmakebase" and
> then have "cmake" and "cmakeninja" inherit from both "cmakebase" and
> then "makefile" and "ninja" respectively?
> 
> [...]


Hi Kyle,

Thanks for the suggestion.


How will debhelper know whether cmake will generate a ninja.build and
not a Makefile?  Is that something debhelper decides 100% (via the -G)
parameter?  Or does the project specify a default in CMakeLists.txt and
debhelper should respect that or ...?

If debhelper decides it: How likely is it that a random CMake project
today will work with ninja instead of make?

Thanks,
~Niels