On Mon, Jun 12, 2017 at 4:04 AM, Groke, Paul via Boost-build <boost-build@lists.boost.org> wrote:

Now my questions
1) The CONTRIBUTING page says to create patches and post them to the mailing list. Is this still current, or can I use github - i.e. fork/push/create pull-request?

Use github.

2) I'm puzzled as to why the Boost.Build engine uses FILE* streams on UNIX-like platforms (execunix.c) and not raw file descriptors when reading output of the child processes. Do you think it would be acceptable to change that code to simply use the "raw" file descriptors on all platforms? AFAICT the only real difference should be buffering, and I don't think the buffering that FILE* provides is important for that use case.

I don't remember why this is.. Other than it's old ANSI-C code. Not sure how I feel about using raw files.

3) Do you think it would be acceptable for a z/OS port to simply not support getting "system" and "user" times for child processes (e.g. by simply setting them to zero)? Or is there a simple way to reliably get the system/user times for *one* child process when using waitpid?

I guess zero is fine initially. It just means any reporting that uses those numbers will be incorrect. I.e. I don't know of uses cases where the numbers are used that will fail if they are zero.

4) Is there some documentation/guideline for writing new compiler support files ("tools/xlcpp.jam" etc.)?

Not explicitly, AFAIK. But you should read through the extender chapter of the docs <http://www.boost.org/build/doc/html/bbv2/extender.html> at least. And use existing toolsets as examples.

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