poco build system and 1.5.0

[marlowabnp]

I see from the roadmap the entry: VS project generator - TODO VS 2011 (Jiang)

Can someone please tell me more about this? I have heard of only two build systems that generate VS project/solution files. One is MakeProjectCreator from OCI, which doesn't seem to be very well known. The other is CMake which looks like an ugly macro-driven mess to me (IMHO).

[alex]

See ProGen in the trunk. Günter wrote it a while ago to deal with the VS projects generation complexity; it does need some work and it does not necessarily have to be released in 1.5.

Having someone to own and maintain the POCO build system would be a great help. Currently, Jiang has stepped in to help with the upcoming releases.

[fbraem]

I have heard of only two build systems that generate VS project/solution files.

I'm a happy user of Premake, which can generate project files for VS, Codelite, Codeblocks, ...

[alex]

With Premake, the main obstacle for POCO was that it wasn't able to generate the grouping filters in Visual Studio. Eventually, I hacked it up few months ago with a recent version but by that time Günter already had ProGen so we kept it.

[guenter]

Also,vwe need support for Windows CE project files for Visual Studio. Can Premake do this?

[pasorobo]

With Premake, the main obstacle for POCO was that it wasn't able to generate the grouping filters in Visual Studio. Eventually, I hacked it up few months ago with a recent version but by that time Günter already had ProGen so we kept it.

Alex

The feature you mentioned was added to Premake 4.4 beta recently and it works for me.

To prove that I just added a repos for premake build script, please check it out:

Usage:

1. Enter "premake" directory
2. Execute the desired script generation bat file (vs2003, vs2005, vs2008, vs2010)
3. Load the solution files generated in the target directory

* Note1: Only "Cache" and "RegularExpression" groups were created (it's late today and I will add all groups later).
* Note2: Tested with vs2005, vs2008 and vs2010.
* Note3: this commit is supposed to show the visual studio filtering&group feature and the built libraries (config: dll, mt, md, platform: win32, x64 ) are not tested for now.
* Note4: Testcases and samples will be added later. Also scripts for other compoments will be added if necessary.

Jiang

[pasorobo]

Also,vwe need support for Windows CE project files for Visual Studio. Can Premake do this?

AFAIK, the current offical Premake can not do that (at least it does not claim it can), but here is an extension for WinCE:

https://bitbucket.org/hubble/premake-wince (not check yet )


Guenter, the build system of POCO is very powerful but IMHO the maintenance costs too much, this is especially true for Visual studio's solutions.
PocoGen is cool but as you mentioned the vs solution file converter is buggy. So can we just use premake scripts to generate the solution files ?
(Sure we can use the script internally and it is not necessary to release them)

I just added a sandbox repos for Premake script, If you and Alex want to see the final result, please let me know. I will find time to make them work, just as the current vs solutions.

Jiang