Re: [boost] Boost building with CMake

From: Martin Wille (mw8329_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-05-18 17:06:58

Dean Michael Berris wrote:

> Not to throw dirt at GNU Make, but it's just too hard and too painful
> to maintain complex project builds with it. Whether by hand or with
> auto-tools.
> 
> Compare that to the trivial Jamfiles that are smart enough to figure
> out what to do when you say:
> 
> exe main : main.cpp ;

FWIW, that can be done with gmake, too. E.g. I do things like this in my
projects:

foo_sources = foo.cpp bar.cpp baz.idl
apps = foo

include make.common

and get some level (*) of cross-platformness, too.

You can't say cross-platform builds like that aren't possible with
gmake. It takes time to develop the harness, but that's true with any
build system.

Note, I'm not suggesting a switch to make-based systems here.
Boost.Build seems to be pretty well developed and a switch back to
square one of a different basic build system would not earn us anything.

Regards,
m

*) "some level" because I have a set of platforms to support that is
significantly smaller than Boost.Build's range of platforms. However, I
think anything that can be done with bjam could be done with gmake, too.