Re: On Boost and modules

From: René Ferdinand Rivera Morell (grafikrobot_at_[hidden])
Date: 2024-04-10 19:37:49

On Wed, Apr 10, 2024 at 2:19 PM Robert Ramey via Boost
<boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> On 4/10/24 11:36 AM, René Ferdinand Rivera Morell via Boost wrote:
> > Do you have a suggestion to encourage you to update to the up to date
> > releases as they happen?
>
> If there were some sort of versioning that might work.

There is, as of 5.0. Which, 5.1, is going to ship with Boost 1.85.

> Suppose b2 boost
> 1.85 is all working.  Suppose that b2 contains the check - "guaranteed
> to work on boost builds up to version 1.85". When b2 starts up, it
> checks the version of boost it's running on.  If the current version of
> b2 can't work with the current version of boost, it emits an helpful
> error message and shuts down.

That's possible. We just need to add "require-b2 5.1 ;" to
boost-root/Jamroot (or any other jamfile). Which this PR
(https://github.com/boostorg/boost/pull/854/files#diff-ea2703244a4dec1e6f7bfe7f4f4836c65eef03591dc6cb55df0be57de4c38b57R125)
will do once I get the final testing on that done and it gets merged.

> This actually begs the main question: Why is b2 coupled to the version
> of Boost in the first place?  I don't have time to argue this now.

It's not. I test every change to B2 with Boost versions from 1.66
onward (although I need to add 1.84 and 1.85 when that's released)
plus develop and master branches on Windows, Linux, and macOS. For
example <https://dev.azure.com/bfgroup/B2/_build/results?buildId=1157&view=logs&s=b4a2ddcd-11cb-5970-1bbf-f636351df511&j=3ad4e34e-ab49-518a-e310-16a369583b97>.
Which means you can use the current B2 with every version of Boost
released in the past 7 years.

> My current version of booststrap genereates a b2 executable which throws
> a seg fault at startup.  Of course this should never occur.  It suggests
> that b2 needs more tests before being released.

Please, I implore you, submit a bug with repro steps to
<https://github.com/bfgroup/b2/issues>.

> >> But when I do, there's almost always some sort of issue which requires
> >> going to the list or slack/boost. Eventually I get this to work and it's
> >> quite satisfactory.  Basically, the development process for b2 is not
> >> resulting in a reliable product.
> >
> > Do you have suggestions as to what to change in the development process?
>
> Independent test suite for b2.

B2 has had a rather large test suite for close to 2 decades. But
testing build systems is challenging. :-(

> Don't couple b2 with current version of Boost

Already the case. But maybe you mean something other than providing
backward compat?

-- 
-- René Ferdinand Rivera Morell
-- Don't Assume Anything  -- No Supone Nada
-- Robot Dreams - http://robot-dreams.net