Well, obviously something being standard doesn't mean people must use it,
they can keep using their existing file format.
What I mean is some file format alternative to CMake, Premake, etc files.
Having this standardized would provide us a default go-to option for a
project description file, lowered complexity in terms of syntax and weird
flows and still guarantees being cross platform since those files are still
gonna be processed by existing (meta)build systems. Basically a file format
to rule them all, if you will.
It could be range from a basic CMake file with 3-4 lines and QT which as
far as I remember uses CMake under the hood

It could even be within the language syntax and first processed by a
compiler to produce an intermediate format that other systems understand,
the point is existing systems lack a lot of things which standardizing can
solve

On Mon, Nov 25, 2024 at 5:03 PM Boris Kolpackov via SG15 <
sg15_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> 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?
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