On Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 4:31 PM, Klemens Morgenstern <klemens.morgenstern@gmx.net> wrote:

I do agree. I use boost.build for my own projects, because the concepts are great and it's afaik the only build system that can do all that, i.e. meta-targets etc. Waht I would love to see is a b3, a solid build system-engine entirely plugin-based (be it in C++, Python or Chaiscript) completely written in C++ (we have boost.python, boost.dll and hopefully boost.process soon) which then is not limited to C/C++, but may be extended to support something like java via plugin.

As has been now mentioned a few times.. I think there's agreement in that the current b2 implementation is curtailing further progress, in most respects IMO. But one thing we will have to wrestle with is "external" dependencies. One of the virtues I see of the current implementation is its independence. Hence we will have to think hard about what libraries we could use. Because I don't fancy bringing in large portions of Boost is a good idea for the plain reason that the circular dependency makes testing much harder. But that a a topic for further discussion :-)

I think if enough boost people are interested in that and are willing to spend there time on this, this could succeed. I've got a few ideas for that, so if enough people are interested (especially those maintaining b2) we could maybe come up with a solid concept.

Is there any interest in pursuing that? I really don't think CMake is the solution for this problem.

I think there is certainly interest, as is demonstrated by the responses here. Which was the main point of this thread. Which now means in deciding how to move forward. And to fast forward to you other response.. I suspect we can join forces to accelerate this effort.

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