Re: [boost] Re: Boost Build System

From: David Abrahams (abrahams_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-06-05 11:26:56

----- Original Message -----
From: <williamkempf_at_[hidden]>

> > > Jamrules: No such file or directory
> >
> > You always need a Jamrules file in your project's root directory,
> if you
> > want to suppress this.
>
> Then the documentation needs to explain this.

I'm still trying to figure out where to draw the documentation line. For
now, I'm not documenting anything that already appears in the regular Jam
documentation. You're probably right that this should go in our docs, too.

> I don't understand
> what Jamrules is even for.  The Jamrules file in the example is just
> an empty file.

It's for any project-specific Jam code that you want to execute before each
Jamfile does its work.

> > > .\features.jam: No such file or directory
> >
> > Yeah, sorry: features.jam needs to be in the top level directory. I
> am
> > tempted to group this with TOOLSET_DIR, but in that case we need a
> different
> > variable name. Opinions?
>
> BOOST_BUILDSYS_DIR? Or should you have a third variable
> BOOST_FEATURES_DIR?

I don't know, that's why I'm asking. We need to discuss criteria for making
a choice.

> BTW, shouldn't TOOLSET_DIR be BOOST_TOOLSET_DIR?

Probably.

> On this topic, are the "features" going to be a global concept or
> something that should be defined for each project?

Good question. But what does "global" mean?

> It makes more
> sense for them to be global (it makes life easier for the developer,
> any way), but the current features.jam file includes some settings
> that don't make sense globally.  I'd think <threading> would default
> to single.

Arguable.

> I don't see why <inlining> is turned off for <msvc> in
> <release> and on for <borland> in <debug>.

Those variations are just an experiment, to show that it works. The features
specifications need to be reviewed.

> These last two are
> commented as examples, but if they're examples only I'd comment out
> the whole line so that features.jam is usable.

Feel free. Also, the rules in features.jam should probably be moved to
boost-base.jam

-Dave