[cairo] building cairo (was Re: 1.10 release schedule)

[Theo Veenker]

Chris wrote:
> If it were easier to build on Windows, I think you might have a larger 
> developer pool with which to work.
> 
> One suggestion might be 1 officially supported Windows compiler/system 
> with clear-cut instructions on how to build it that work (instead of 
> "lots of ways to build Cairo").

Although your message wasn't really about the release schedule it made me
think. I generally try to avoid the W platform like the plague, but you're
right it's a bit odd developers like you and me have to go through so much
effort to compile cairo under Windows (I decided to not bother and just
download the binaries from http://www.gtk.org/download-windows.html, maybe
that works for you too).

IIRCC a few years back there was some talk about using cmake instead of the
autotools. I believe it was considered unwise to spend time on setting up
a new build system instead of working on cairo itself.

I'm currently investigating cmake for my own stuff and sofar I must say it
is really well suited for cross platform builds and in IMO much easier to set
up than the autostuff. The nice thing is it is not only capable of generating
Makefiles but also project files for MSVC and Borland. It also can create
packages/installers (through cpack) for unix (rpm, dep, tgz), windows (nsis)
and mac. I haven't got to that yet but it sounds appealing to me.

I suppose the cairo developers still consider it too much work to convert
from automake to cmake, but maybe it could be a job for a GSOC candidate?

Just my 2 cents.

Theo