kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 12/5/2017 12:31 PM, Simon Richter wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 05.12.2017 17:30, Maciej Sumiński wrote:
> 
>> When you build a program, do you always go through its build manual or
>> do you start with 'cmake .. && make'? I think there is no point
>> enforcing an optional dependency. Another good solution would be to
>> autodetect libngspice and enable the simulator if it is available.
> 
> With my packaging hat on: please don't. It is really annoying to find
> out that a build dependency changed when users complain about entire
> features going missing.
> 
>    Simon

This is why I have not turned these build options on.  From my
experience, most package devs would prefer not having every option
turned on and then fail to build.  The kicad project cannot know what
dependencies will be available on every platform so it is the
responsibility of the package dev to determine this and configure their
kicad build accordingly.  As for developers, if you are savvy enough to
build kicad from source, you should be more than capable of looking up
the build options.  If not, you shouldn't be compiling kicad from
source.  Unfortunately, cmake does not have a command line switch that
allows you to view the build options and their default settings.
Autotools is far superior in this instance.  This is one of my pet
peeves with cmake.  Most of the software I have built over the years
typically only has the build options enabled for the features that will
build on all platforms.