[gentoo-dev] cmake + ninja vs autotools

[William L. Thomson Jr.]

It maybe worth considering switching the default generator in the
cmake-utils.eclass from the default of emake to ninja.

- : ${CMAKE_MAKEFILE_GENERATOR:=emake}
+ : ${CMAKE_MAKEFILE_GENERATOR:=ninja}

For those with cmake ebuilds you can test this out now via 

CMAKE_MAKEFILE_GENERATOR="ninja"
inherit cmake-utils

Working with both cmake and meson. It seems the real performance of
meson comes from ninja. I am a bit more a fan of cmake than meson for
cpack, generation of deb, rpm, and binary tarball, in addition to
sources. That can be done with meson but not as elegantly at this time.

ninja is noticeably faster than make. I haven't seen any cases yet where
cmake autotools works, and ninja does not. They seem pretty equal, so
should be safe. Of course could use testing first.

Again something to consider. Myself I am avoiding autotools anywhere I
can, mostly because of the slow configure and also slow make. Anytime I
use cmake, I am using ninja generator.

-- 
William L. Thomson Jr.