Build tools

From: Beman Dawes (beman_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-01-09 13:22:07

There has been a lot of evolution recently in my thinking about adding 
boost library build support.  The requirements seem to me to be:

*  A developer adding a new library must at most add only a single entry to 
a text file, and not have to know anything about platform specific 
files.  If possible, a newly added library should be automatically 
detected, so that the developer doesn't need to do anything at all beyond 
using the boost directory structure.

*  A developer adding support for a new platform or compiler should only 
have to add to a single file describing how to do the build for that 
platform or compiler, and shouldn't have to identify the files that will 
need to be built.

*  The build should rely only on tools native to the platform and compiler, 
or supplied via the boost download.  (Thus ScCons isn't a solution, even if 
was available, because it requires Python be installed.)

*  The details of how the build is done for a particular platform or 
compiler should be appropriate for that platform.  Thus there might be a 
supplied make file, an IDE configuration file, or whatever suits.

*  The requirements above imply some new automated tool.  Jens Maurer's 
regression.cpp has shown that such a tool (with separate file and command 
configuration) can be kept very simple yet effective.

*  Platform and compiler specific build files can and should be 
pre-generated and supplied as part of the download to minimize user effort.

*  Some users wish to build libraries form multiple platforms or 
compilers.   It is easier to supply all build files and let the user choose 
which to invoke.

*  The build tools must be able to handle Boost growth issues such as 
identified in Directory Structure proposals and discussion.

(Thanks to John Maddock for private discussions regarding several of these 
requirements.)

I've built a generator program (booster.cpp, using some of Jens' code) 
which can take in configuration files and produce an output file such as a 
script, or makefile, or anything else requiring text subsitution.

See http://www.egroups.com/files/boost/buildtools/

In addition to the program, there are two configuration files (one 
specifying the file list, the other specifying the operations to be 
performed and text to be operated upon.

There is also an output file (sunpro.mak) which is the result of executing:

    booster -c=sunpro.cfg make path=../..

I'm not claiming this would actually be a valid Sunpro make file; I just 
used the regex sunpro.mak as a model because it was shortest.

Pending comments, I'll go ahead and try to actually produce build scripts 
for one or two of the compilers I have access to.

--Beman