cmake as a build tool?

[Doug]

Have the omnet developers have ever considered using cmake as their primary build tool?

I ask because the lack of Visual Studio project/solution files makes it difficult to link omnet to other projects/software.  Basically, one has to alter other projects to work with mingw, as opposed a more standard compiler on Windows.

I should note that I think the combination of mingw and eclipse is wonderful, and there is no issue when using Linux -- just asking because it might be more capable 'out of the box'.

Doug

[Rudolf Hornig]

Strange coincidence. I've just looked into cmake on Friday: what projects are using it and whether it would be usable for us. Currently we're supporting the MS toolchain in the commercial edition (OMNEST) but only by using the (old) nmake tool (with nmake specific makefiles). Probably it would be indeed good to have VS project file support. We may look into this for the 5.x branch.

 

Rudolf

[Doug]

I'm advocating the use of cmake principally for one reason -- the capability to generate project/solution files for a variety of platforms and ide's (such as Eclipse, Visual Studio, mingw, make, etc.).

At the moment I'm looking at using omnet in conjunction with osgEarth to visualize a simulation.  osgEarth and OpenSceneGraph both use cmake as their build tool - an increasing number of software projects are using cmake.  I personally maintain the openeaagles framework, and quite frankly I'll will move in that direction soon.

Bottom line is, if omnet leveraged the cmake system, it would be easier to create Visual Studio compatible libraries to link to other projects and more generally, its 'build' system would be more inline with something that is becoming more 'standard' - if there is such a thing.

Doug

[Rudolf Hornig]

On Wednesday, 1 October 2014 16:29:18 UTC+2, Doug wrote:

I'm advocating the use of cmake principally for one reason -- the capability to generate project/solution files for a variety of platforms and ide's (such as Eclipse, Visual Studio, mingw, make, etc.).

I see your points. Having a build system that plays nicely with other IDE-s would be indeed a bonus. Some people prefer XCode for debugging while others use Emacs. While it would be a big change, we may provide cmake build files for the omnet projects while still maintaining the old build system for a while.

I have not used cmake to date, but I see its advantage. Probably I will play with it after the release of omnet 4.6

At the moment I'm looking at using omnet in conjunction with osgEarth to visualize a simulation.  osgEarth and OpenSceneGraph both use cmake as their build tool - an increasing number of software projects are using cmake.  I personally maintain the openeaagles framework, and quite frankly I'll will move in that direction soon.

This seems to be an interesting project. We were thinking about adding some advanced visualization to OMNeT++, where you would see real life environment, but there were always more pressing things to do. If you come up something interesting, let us know :)

 

Bottom line is, if omnet leveraged the cmake system, it would be easier to create Visual Studio compatible libraries to link to other projects and more generally, its 'build' system would be more inline with something that is becoming more 'standard' - if there is such a thing.

We have a mode in opp_makemake (-n option) which generates nmake compatible makefiles (for the ooooold microsft nmake utility), but I know, it is way outdated and probably nobody is using it anymore.

Rudolf

 

Doug

[Doug]

>>

This seems to be an interesting project. We were thinking about adding some advanced visualization to OMNeT++, where you would see real life environment, but there were always more pressing things to do. If you come up something interesting, let us know :)

<<

Will do....

Doug