Re: Is a modern build system acceptable for older platforms

>
> That indeed would be an improvement, but maybe we could fix that specific
> pain point without having to throw away twenty years worth of work?

Indeed! Only a few thousands of lines of code can generate the whole you
manually wrote, it's the perfect result!

re-invention of portability hacks
>

This is the main goal for migrating to cmake - most of hacks cmake takes on
itself.

Of course, blowing off support for any platform not released in the
> last five years would cut down on the number of such hacks that we'd
> need to reinvent.
>

I suppose it's wrong goal and speculations:
1. 5 years old system we can support out of a box, it should just work.
2. up to 10 years will support too but maybe with some small extra actions
from users. (for example, even now windows user should do tons of extra
actions to build postgres)
3. >10 I think can work but it's should be the enthusiasm of some users, we
shouldn't worry about it.

I think ten years plus open doors for more it's not same as just 5 years.
This looks like a good trade-off.