Re: Boost Build System

From: williamkempf_at_[hidden]
Date: 2001-06-04 15:47:45

--- In boost_at_y..., "David Abrahams" <abrahams_at_m...> wrote:
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <williamkempf_at_h...>
> > I've just tested your example Jam files and find this to be the 
case
> > for me as well.  It looks promising.  What I'd like to do is 
write a
> > Jamfile for Boost.Threads as a real world example of the 
Boost.Build
> > system, but I frankly have no idea what I'm getting myself into
> > there.  I may send you some (private) e-mails asking questions if 
I
> > get stuck.
> 
> Please do!
> However, I think a slightly wider audience will be interested. I 
usually
> prefer to do these things out in the open, on the boost list, as 
you never
> know who will be lurking and might want to jump in and contribute. 
Unless
> there's an outcry, let's do it right here. If/when that happens, we 
can
> establish a small private email group.

Well then, let me jump in with some questions and comments.

I wrote a jamfile for Boost.Threads with very little effort, which 
was very promising!  A Win32 static library for MSVC is properly 
generated by my Jamfile which is great.  I've also got GCC installed 
on the system, however, and this is still not working.  I'll track 
down why shortly, but this has lead to a question... how does one go 
about building for a single compiler?  By default all compilers are 
attempted which generates a lot of static which makes it harder to 
focus on the problems with a single compiler set.

Also, I did run into problems with Jam and long file names.  For 
Win32 the Boost.Threads library relies on the Platform SDK so I've 
got an include line in the jamfile like this:

          <include>"c:/program files/microsoft platform sdk/include"

With or with out the quotes this fails as Jam breaks the path at any 
space character.  So, once again I had to resort to short file names 
like so:

          <include>C:/PROGRA~1/MIC977~1/INCLUDE

Hopefully we can get the Jam developers to correct this one soon :(.

Another thing I had to do was copy all the .JAM files and the 
JAMRULES file from the build_system_2001_6_3 directory into my own 
root directory.  For now this is no big deal, but what's going to be 
the proper way to get this to work?

General first impressions are very good :).  This should make 
developing build scripts for the Boost libraries very trivial in 
comparison to Make scripts or other alternatives!

Bill Kempf