Re: [boost] What would make tool authors happier..

Subject: Re: [boost] What would make tool authors happier..
From: Daniel James (dnljms_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-06-08 07:34:31

On 5 June 2015 at 03:50, Rene Rivera <grafikrobot_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> I've run into one case two times now of trying to create a git repo that is
> a subset of Boost but otherwise has the same structure. Here's one of them <
> https://github.com/grafikrobot/boost-doctools>. It was a chore to create
> because it went something like this: a) build the doctools (quickbook) and
> get errors, b) look at the mising header errors and determine which library
> was missing, c) find the library git repo, d) add the submodule for it at
> root/libs, e) repeat. This would be something I would highly consider
> automating the next time around. But because step (d) was actually hard as
> the library did not always need to go under libs, but instead needed to go
> in some further level deep I made various mistakes that where hard to
> recover from because I don't know enough about how to deal with recovering
> from git submodule errors to make it "easy". Although what's funny is that
> I've done a subset of Boost as part of a git repo now three times. The
> third time my memory of the previous two times made me choose to avoid that
> pain. Instead I wrote a Boost Build extension that made the requirement of
> having the Boost structure go away.

I'd see that a something that's just too painful to do, regardless of
module locations. But if you must, instead of adding the modules to a
repo, I'd create a clean clone of the super project and only
initialise the modules that I need. That way you can quickly grab all
the numeric modules using:

git submodule update --init -- libs/numeric/

And pretend they're a single module. Which means you'll get a few
extra modules - but only a few.

Since Boost Build scans for include files, is it possible to get it to
list all the files it thinks are required? I realise it's not entirely
accurate because of macros, but hopefully it would be good enough. Or
perhaps get it to run 'g++ -H' or 'cl /showIncludes' to tell which
files were used. With that information it shouldn't be that hard to
work out which modules are required.