Re: [boost] Re: Re: vc8.0 toolset (bjam)

From: Ben Hutchings (ben.hutchings_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-10-04 03:27:00

Tony Juricic wrote:
<snip>
> Environment easily gets too large, too messy and unmanageable (especially
> when you add also Java and/or Python) and I can not understand why would
> each tool or app pollute global environment. If you think a bit about it,
> there is no huge difference between the environment and the registry except
> that latter has a tree structure (as opposed to flat key-value environment)
> and does not get passed to each app as a block of memory.

Under Windows it is common to set environment variables on a 
per-computer or per-user basis - in which case they are stored in the 
registry, loaded by Windows Explorer and passed on to the processes it 
spawns.  If you're used to this way of doing things I can see why you 
might not appreciate the use of environment variables.  However, there 
is a huge difference: registry settings (and configuration files) have 
static scope whereas environment variables have dynamic scope, and 
dynamic scope is sometimes very useful.  You can easily change 
environment variables on a per-session or per-command basis.  However, I 
agree that they should be used sparingly.

Ben.