Re: [boost] CMake Announcement from Boost Steering Committee

Subject: Re: [boost] CMake Announcement from Boost Steering Committee
From: Jason Roehm (jasonr_at_[hidden])
Date: 2017-07-18 21:00:16

On 07/18/2017 04:33 PM, Zach Laine via Boost wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 18, 2017 at 3:24 PM, Chris Glover via Boost <
> boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> internal package manager before I can upgrade boost. Currently, all I need
>> to do it write a script called from our custom build system that does
>> something like;
>>
>> - call bootstrap
>> - call b2 with appropriate flags (this is the hard part)
>> - add the include path
>> - synthesize the link libraries
>>
>> What's nice about this is that there are no dependencies -- everything is
>> completely self contained, and I like that.
>>
> There is no reason why Boost+CMake can't do that too.
In order for it to be as self-contained as it is now, it would require 
embedding the source code for CMake and any of its dependencies (I'm not 
sure whether there any to speak of) into the Boost distribution. I agree 
with Chris in that a big advantage of the current setup is that it is 
not dependent on CMake being installed on the user's system already. 
Even in today's almost-always-connected-to-a-package-manager world, 
there are setups where it is cumbersome to say the least to install 
additional packages (especially binaries) when they are needed.

I'm not a fan of Boost.Build either (I've used it almost exclusively in 
the workflow described above), but it seems like this effort is "discard 
one poorly documented, difficult to author/read build tool used by 
relatively few people, adopt a poorly documented, difficult to 
author/read build tool used by a lot more people". It's a shame that 
there really isn't a better tool that is easy to read, write, extend, 
and use across multiple platforms. At the risk of running into the 
situation described in https://xkcd.com/927/, I hope something better 
than CMake emerges someday.

Jason