Discussed in issue #1. I'd like to avoid downloading dependencies with CMake. I want to keep the release packages as standalone, including pre-downloaded libraries and pre-generated manpages so as to have as few external dependencies as possible (currently only CMake itself.) The fetch.sh script to download packages really only exists as a convenience for developers wanting to contribute changes to msgpack-tools. Downloading external packages should not be considered part of the "normal" build or install process.

Yeah you are right, but there is no difference in convenience with fetch.sh vs CMake downloader. I'm used to this flow because the "normal" build/install process at my work is exactly the same as the release process. We provide development,testing,acceptation and production package straight from git tags and branches with our CI. I have no real idea how you would like some sort of mechanism into msgpack-tools as also other people could benefit from it.

I totaly understand it takes way to much time to support distro X,Y,Z and platform A,B,C.

We could also keep this as a reference and close as-is. Then I will fork the latest release and integrate my changes as needed at Dual Inventive organisation and feature-branch. So our effort will not be lost-in-battle.

Let me know what you think.

I will close this, as this will be solved for the project in a different way.

Having thought this over, I think you're right that CMake should handle fetching dependencies and generating man pages. The build process should not be so different between the repository and release packages, and the half-baked shell scripts for doing these things need to go.

I'm looking at building off of this PR and adding the ability to generate man pages if md2man-roff is installed, this way I can get rid of tools/fetch.sh and tools/man.sh. Right now the code doesn't build on Arch (${CMAKE_SYSTEM_VARIANT} is missing quotes around it) but I'll fix that as well. I'd like to preserve your code to build of a .deb package if possible so I'm getting a Debian VM set up right now to see if I can make it work.

I use CMake in production environment where every build results in a debian package and is automaticly pushed and pgp-signed and added to out own repository. So when you develop and release it automaticly results in good packages :+).