[Boost-build] Customising build path and compile options. Adding a new build type

From: Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso (jordigh_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-06-29 14:18:48

I just started using boost-build today. I'm very used to writing my
own Makefiles, but now that my project is starting to grow, I decided
that I needed a more flexible build system, and autotools looks too
daunting. Hence, boost-build. Feel free to answer my questions with an
RTFM, but just tell me which FM to R, or better, which section. :-)
I'm having a bit of a hard time navigating the documentation. In case
it matters, I'm using Debian testing and the boost-build package found
therein.

A few questions:

1) bjam by default puts my object files and binaries under
  bin/$compiler/$build-type. While I'm happy with object code going
  in there, but I'd rather have the binary in the same directory as
  the bin/ directory (i.e. one level above bin/), with different
  kinds of release postfixed (e.g. binary-release binary-debug
  ...). I'd also like to remove the $compiler intermediate directory,
  since I'll never use more than one compiler per copy of the source
  tree. Naturally, I also want "bjam clean" to clean both the object
  code from the bin/ tree and the binaries in the top directory. Is
  this a tall order?

2) I want to be very picky and have fine-tuned controls about the
  compile options that bjam passes to gcc. I don't understand how to
  specify exactly which options to pass and which not to.

3) I want to add a profiling target, which requires different compile
  and linking options than the debug target. I think I sorta
  understand how to add a new kind of build as detailed in chapter 6
  of the manual, but I don't understand how to set its compile and
  linking options.

Thanks in advance,
- Jordi G. H.