Re: [boost] Let's stop distributing binaries

Subject: Re: [boost] Let's stop distributing binaries
From: Soul Studios (matt_at_[hidden])
Date: 2018-08-29 23:03:54

>> Any boost library should be straight forward to build if it's not header
>> only.
> 
> Agreed, but bjam/jam/whatever is an impediment here.  Boost is the
> only thing I've ever encountered that used this.  CMake is the most
> widely used build environment now for C/C++ and the sooner we move to
> replacing bjam/jam/whatever with CMake, the sooner all this build
> suffering ends.

I must admit, I got pretty mystified when I first encountered bjam. The 
documentation isn't, well, good, or even existent in some areas.

The central problem with boost is twofold - 1, if a library is 
header-only, then it's independent and that's *good*. 2, if a library is 
header-only, then it increases compile-times and that's *bad*. This is 
really a C++ problem, but one that a decent build system aught to fix 
eg. ninja, incredibuild, etc