Xcode and Cross Platform Dev (cmake,scons)

I'll be setting up a cross plaform project soon and I was wondering if
anyone knew of any tools that allowed for cross platform project
definition. On Windows, I have visual studio solutions/project files,
on linux I have make files and on mac I'll be having xcodeproj files.

Having three sets of files that define what makes up library foo and
application bar isn't my choice for sustainability. I looked at open
source projects like Firefox and they seem to use automake/autoconf.
The problem is that my team has found that using the native IDEs yield
great improvement's in efficiency over an editor and a makefile.
Therefore, I'd like to be able to offer a comfortable and powerful
environment for them.

I have looked at cmake and scons as they are cross platform and can
generate the IDE project files (on windows), but I haven't heard that
anything can generate xcode projects. The xcodeproj format is text
based, so it might not be that difficult to generate it on the fly, but
I'd hate to re-invent the wheel, especially working against the clock
of a release schedule.

So, if any of you know of any good tools for generating xcodeproj files
off of makefiles, I'd love to hear about them.

citizenkahn schrieb:

> I'll be setting up a cross plaform project soon and I was wondering if
> anyone knew of any tools that allowed for cross platform project
> definition. On Windows, I have visual studio solutions/project files,
> on linux I have make files and on mac I'll be having xcodeproj files.
>
....
>
> So, if any of you know of any good tools for generating xcodeproj files
> off of makefiles, I'd love to hear about them.

I usually create a new Xcode project with an "external target". That
means it simply runs an existing makefile. You might have to configure
the build target (i.e. 'all'). By doing this, you can edit files in
Xcode and simply press Build.

More tricky (on Xcode) than this is
* have the right tools in $PATH that some Linux sources assume (use
Fink etc.)
* have the right libraries
* autoconf usually does not help on a Mac (in many cases I have simply
created my own makefile with 20 lines...)
* if you have problems, you might need a HFS partition which
distinguishes between upper and lower case file names. It once took me
2 weeks to find out that there was a Makefile and a makefile in the
original .tgz

-- hns