Support for source files and/or built libraries w/i dependencies

[evanwporter]

First let me preface this discussion by mentioning how much I appreciate the work that has been put into this. CMake is absolutely terrible. Cargo is amazing. Cabin is amazing.

Getting into the meat of the discussion, how difficult would it be to support dependencies that aren't header only?

We could this by labeling each dependency as a module (not related to C++20), the main package is also a module.

Compilation could then be divided into a three step build process:

1. Compile the source files of each module into object files
2. Bundle each module into a library
3. Link each library into the final executable.

The full list of modules, inherited flags, and the list of included dirs and whatnot could be compiled into a cabin.lock file just like Cargo.

For the past few weeks, I've been making my own meta builder in C++ using Ninja as the backend. I've implemented most of what I described above within this metabuilder. However I found out about this, and I realized that instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, it'd be better to just contribute to an established project. Thus here we are.

But I don't want to dive into Cabin just to get my PR rejected, or find out that this idea isn't feasible for whatever reason. But if you (Mr. Matsui) do think this is not a terrible idea, and furthermore something you'd be open to pursuing then I'd love to talk more about it with you.

Disclaimer: I've never used Cabin.

Side Question: Since Cabin doesn't build ninja files does it have its own in-house change tracker, ie: a way to know what needs to be built, and not build everything from scratch?

[evanwporter]

Another point to add onto everything that was said above, I think that cabin could benefit from using ninja-build rather than make, since ninja seems more scalable and faster. Also it can be easily be ported to windows, while the same can't be said for windows.

Speaking of windows, I saw that #1045 was closed, this is fine, but eventually I think it would be cool to see cabin support linux as well as windows, I don't think it would be too difficult either.

Last point is that if dependencies are in fact bundled as modules then the install command would/could download a patch cabin.toml in addition to cloning the repo that would be added and allow the cabin to recognize a dep as a dep.

[ken-matsui]

Thanks. I don't have enough time to work on this project these days so allow me to answer your questions briefly.

1. About building deps: That's exactly what I've worked on recently and will continue working on that feature when I get time more. I needed to bring a large change to Manifest and will make a similar change to BuildConfig as well (make it location-independent).
2. About Ninja: I'm currently using GNU Make as the build system backend. But dependency resolution and scheduling is done within Cabin, so what Make is doing just running commands. Considering future flexibility, I think I'll ditch Make and develop an internal build system backend, i.e., no plan for Ninja.
3. About Windows: I have no knowledge in Windows, so supporting it will just increase the maintenance cost unless someone I can trust (important to avoid the same thing as the xz utils backdoor), who is knowledgeable in both Cabin and Windows, is happy to join here. Keep in mind that I'm working alone and unpaid.