Support an alternative build system: CMake

[ihrwein]

I opened this issue for getting feedback from syslog-ng's user and developer community about supporting CMake as another build system.

CMake is a build system generator. It generates makefiles on *NIX, Xcode project on OSX, Visual Studio project on Windows.

I'd be nice to build syslog-ng with CMake (as well, I don't want to throw autotools away).

It has the following advantages over autotools:

• no more shell code for configure
• native build system support: make, xcode, visual studio, code blocks
• faster configuration
• faster building
• most IDEs can import CMake projects (QtCreator, Clion, Eclipse, ...)
• optional package generation (debian, rpm)
• GUI for configuration [1]
• out of tree build is the default: it won't touch your source folder (automake does it even if you build your code out of tree)

The two build systems can nicely live next to each other (this is also an aim). Several high profile projects supported both autotools and CMake (e.g. LLVM, Google Test) or transitioned to the latter one (KDE [2]).

The first supported platforms would be Linux and OSX then we can extend it to the other *NIX systems (BSD, AIX, Solaris) or even Windows...

@dnsjts and me has a PoC version of syslog-ng which can be built with CMake (core & 10+ modules) on Linux and OSX.

[1] http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iz8Ho-23lNg/UThQoo7lvzI/AAAAAAAAAGM/Oqv0soTPKOM/s1600/cmake-guiqt.png
[2] https://lwn.net/Articles/188693/

[bkil-syslogng]

👍