Re: [boost] Directory structure not quite right yet?

Subject: Re: [boost] Directory structure not quite right yet?
From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-01-06 10:32:48

On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 4:12 AM, Vladimir Prus <vladimir_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> On 12/31/2014 06:28 PM, Peter Dimov wrote:
>>
>> Typically, when some library is installed in, say, $LIB, its headers
>> reside in $LIB/include and its .a/.lib files in $LIB/lib. Our
>> libraries, when built, go to $BOOST/stage/lib, which is close enough. But
>> our header directory is just $BOOST, which doesn't seem right, as
>> the whole of Boost is accessible through it.
>> It makes sense, at least to me, to have the headers in
>> $BOOST/include/boost, instead of just $BOOST/boost. The transition to Git
>> would have
>> been a good time to switch to that - there were enough other changes to
>> the structure.
>>
>> I'm not saying that we should switch right away or something like that,
>> but am I the only one to whom such a switch (at some unspecified
>> time in the future) seems a good idea?
>
>
> Personally and theoretically, I'm ambivalent here. We never had any
> practical issues with the current layout, and 'stage' is not 100% equivalent
> to installed package, and one can argue that $BOOST/stage/include might be a
> better location than $BOOST/include, or that $BOOST/stage/lib should be
> changed to $BOOST/lib (and then everybody will be confused bewteen "libs"
> and "lib", so maybe we should rename "libs" to "components"), but the change
> you propose is also logical and easy to make.
>
> The only important aspect though, speaking as release manager, is that if we
> change this now, we'll likely break a huge number of user
> build and automation scripts that expect current layout, lots of
> instructions on the web using current layout, and so forth. That's easily
> person-months of pain. Do we want it so badly?

I feel very strongly that we need to continue to ship the current
.zip/etc files on SourceForge with their current structure so that all
user scripts, including those that use b2, continue to work.

I see a new directory structure as something generated by Peter's
Boost Package Manager (aka bpm). It may well install some new top
level Jamfiles and bootstrap scripts. Or maybe there will be a new
"packaged-boost" top level super-project. But that's not clear yet.

--Beman