James via SG15 <sg15_at_[hidden]> writes:

> Has there been any consideration for establishing a standardized format to
> describe C++ projects that could be universally recognized by different
> build systems? This wouldn’t involve creating a new build system, but
> rather defining a common file format that accurately describes project
> structure, dependencies, and build requirements in a standardized way.
>
> The goal would be to improve interoperability and developer experience
> across different build systems and generators, also allowing projects to
> seamlessly transition between them without modifications to the project
> file itself.

C++ projects vary greatly in terms of build complexity.

On one extreme you would have a novice playing with their first
C++ program. They don't care about things like being cross-platform
and they would prefer to not even write anything build system-related
relying on some sort of build by convention or whatever their IDE
might generate under the hood.

On the other extreme you would have something like Qt, which (just
to highlight) cares greatly about being cross-platform, relies on
autoconf-style configuration probing, needs to compile Objective-C/C++
besides C/C++, relies heavily on source code generators (moc, etc),
and so on.

I am interested to hear, what part of this range you think this
standardized file format should cater to?