Once generated, an autotools build is basically just scripting & makefiles and works on a ton of platforms. It's old & ugly, but it works pretty well. You only need the compiler and associated tools to build using the common ./configure && make pattern and the common make targets (install, etc) are provided. Plus, automake just generates plain makefiles which you can look into and debug. Its a logical step from the plain makefile build and slots in nicely with open source package management distribution ala Debian packages etc.

Also, we've just spent a couple years now upgrading this system and moving to CMAKE now isn't going to give us more than what we already need, apart from a hard requirement, learning a new setup, and a perhaps nicer but more opaque build sequence. It would be more of a requirement if Pd *had* to be built in Xcode and/or Visual Studio and CMAKE could then generate the project files for us but we don't really need that.

On Jan 10, 2018, at 2:54 PM, pd-list-request@lists.iem.at wrote:

Message: 3
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2018 14:53:51 +0100
From: David Medine <dmedine@ucsd.edu>
To: pd-list@lists.iem.at
Subject: Re: [PD] pd-0.48.1 trouble getting started
Message-ID: <414663f8-52e8-7272-5e3d-37566ea07411@ucsd.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"

Any reason not to use CMake? I find it makes things a lot easier, 
especially when dealing with multiple platforms. It requires installing 
CMake, of course, but I think it is reasonable to expect that anyone 
building Pd from source can install CMake.

--------
Dan Wilcox
@danomatika
danomatika.com
robotcowboy.com