Re: Boost Build System

From: williamkempf_at_[hidden]
Date: 2001-06-04 13:39:40

--- In boost_at_y..., "David Abrahams" <abrahams_at_m...> wrote:
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <williamkempf_at_h...>
> To: <boost_at_y...>
> Sent: Monday, June 04, 2001 1:58 PM
> Subject: [boost] Re: Boost Build System
> 
> 
> > --- In boost_at_y..., Dietmar Kuehl <dietmar_kuehl_at_y...> wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > just in case anybody else is looking for the Jam sources: The
> > current
> > > release is available at <ftp://ftp.perforce.com/pub/jam/jam-
> > 2.3.2.zip>.
> > > --
> > > <mailto:dietmar_kuehl_at_y...> <http://www.dietmar-kuehl.de/>
> > > Phaidros eaSE - Easy Software Engineering:
> > <http://www.phaidros.com/>
> >
> > I'd just like to get Jam bootstrapped on my Win2000 box.
> > The "installation" instructions leave a lot to be desired.  I've 
set
> > an environment variable for MSVCNT to point to the ".. \microsoft
> > visual studio\vc98" directory and run nmake (I also uncommented 
the
> > MSVC lines in the makefile which was not mentioned in the readme).
> 
> This is odd. I don't remember having to do that. In fact, the 
version I have
> on my system still has those lines commented out. I presume I 
bootstrapped
> from that, so you probably should back those changes out.

Well, I eventually got everything to bootstrap with those lines 
uncommented, so I assume it was either needed or made no difference.  
I will however see what happens when I comment them out again.

> > It manages to create a jam0.exe but when executed by the makefile
> > this results in a fatal stop and the error message "On NT, set
> > BCCROOT, MSVCNT, or MSVC to the root of the Borland or Microsoft 
dire
> > ctories." being printed out.  Anyone know if I've missed something
> > here?  Bootstrapping Jam had better be simple if it's going to be 
the
> > Boost build tool.  (I also worry about bootstrapping it on 
platforms
> > currently not accounted for in the Jam makefiles.)
> 
> Well, it certainly was pretty trivial for me. Is it possible that 
your use
> of a relative path to the MSVC tools confused the bootstrap?

It wasn't relative.  I put a space in the quote above after the '..' 
on purpose, but I guess I didn't get the point across very well.  
The '..' was to represent the drive where MSVC was installed.  I used 
a fully qualified path here.  The two real problems are that the 
environment variable must be 'MSVCNT' not 'msvcnt' and that long file 
names couldn't be used.  Change both of these and it bootstrapped 
nicely.

> One think I've always done was to avoid spaces in pathnames. You 
may need to
> embed some extra quotes.

The exact environment variable command I used was:

set msvcnt="c:\program files\microsoft visual studio\vc98"

The quotes around the path should have been all that was needed for 
any program that supports long file names, and the case of the 
variable shouldn't have mattered.  The command that finally got 
everything to work was:

set MSVCNT=c:\progra~1\micros~3\vc98

Do you know how tedious it is to even figure out what the short path 
name was?

> Anyway, I don't think this is the worst problem we could have. We 
have
> agreed that we can supply prebuilt binaries for popular platforms if
> neccessary. I'm confident that we can improve the bootstrap 
process, too, if
> we feel it's important.

My fear is that if these issues exist for bootstrapping jam that the 
same issues will exist for running jam on our jamfiles.  For 
instance, the environment variable above is needed by Jam to run on 
NT/2000 as near as I can tell for Jam to figure out the compiler 
being used.

Bill Kempf