Re: A proposal for a modern build-system

From: Alexander Grund (alexander.grund_at_[hidden])
Date: 2024-03-25 11:34:03

Am 23.03.24 um 19:49 schrieb Hassan Sajjad via Boost:
> 3) And will also require them to know hmake.
> The alternative is to learn the command-line.
The commandline is a closed set. I.e. there are a few allowed switches 
with a few allowed values.
E.g. for b2 it is `b2 variant=release`, `b2 variant=debug` or even `b2 
variant=release,debug`

In your example C++ is used which means the possible things you can do 
are literally unlimitted. This makes it much harder to use.

> hbuild could be configured to pass command-line options to our hmake.cpp where we can parse them and define configurations based on those variables.
Now library authors need to add and maintain code for command-line 
parsing just to build. Not an improvement IMO.
Especially as it means that different libraries might parse the 
commandline differently. Especially for Boost which is a collection of 
libraries, not a single one., although they get built together.

Another downside of your example: To build only a release build, which 
is likely the only thing users care about, you need to set 2 cache 
variables.
This is one reason an established build system is better: People know 
things like this or they have been solved/improved over the time the 
build system already exists.

Also the supposed benefit of faster compile times isn't convincing for 
me: In your example you saved 5 seconds.
I don't really build often and especially I don't build from scratch 
often but rather do incremental builds. So the saved time compiling 
doesn't make up the time writing stuff for a new build system.

So my vote would be NO on this proposal.

PS: Please also read the mailing list rules as already indicated by 
others, especially https://www.boost.org/community/policy.html#quoting