[dev] [OFFTOPIC] Recommended meta-build system

Hi,

I'm wondering if anyone has had particularly good experiences with any
meta-build system (cmake, etc) in the following circumstances:

I will have a large codebase which consists of some generic files and
some processor specific files. (I'm not worried about OS environent
stuff like "has vsnprintf?" that configure deals with.) In addition,
it'd be nice to be able to have options like "debugging", "release",
"grof-compiled", etc, similar to procesor specification. I need to be
able to select the appropriate files for a given build and compile
them together to form an executable. It would be preferrable if all
object files and executables could coexist (because it's a C++
template heavy source-base that means individual files compile
relatively slowly, so it'dbe preferrable only to recompile if the
source has actually changed) using directories or naming conventions.

I've been doing some reading about things like cmake and SCons but
most strike me as having "built-in logic for their normal way of doing
things and are relatively clunky if you specify something different".
(Incidentally, when I say meta-build system I mean that I don't mind
if it builds things directly or if it outputs makefiles that can be
invoked.) Does anyone have any experiences of using any tool for this
kind of purpose?

(One option would be to just have a static makefile and then do some
include-path hackery to select processor specific directories to pick
a specific versions of files depending on options and then rely on
ccache to pick up the correct object file from the cache rather than
recompiling. But that feels like a hack for avoiding having a more
expressive build system.)

Many thanks for sharing any experiences,

-- 
cheers, dave tweed__________________________
computer vision reasearcher: david.tweed_AT_gmail.com
"while having code so boring anyone can maintain it, use Python." --
attempted insult seen on slashdot