Re: [jamming] new release of "FT Jam"

From: David Abrahams (david.abrahams_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-06-26 11:41:44

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Turner" <david.turner_at_[hidden]>

> Hello,
>
>   I'd like to inform you that I've just released a new version
>   of "ftjam", the improved version of Jam that runs under
>   Windows 9x (originally written for FreeType, but fully
>   bacwkwards compatible with Jam 2.3.1).
>
>   This new release fixes a few annoying things in the original
>   Makefile/Jamfile (they assumed that the current directory was
>   in the path, which rarely happens on secure Unix systems).
>
>   This new release also supports indirect rule invocation, as in
>
>       [ $(RULE)  params ]
>
>   which calls the rule whose name is given by the expansion
>   of the RULE variable. This should be of great value to the
>   Boost community and to other Jam hackers..

Fabulous! Does it also work without the square brackets if you don't need a
return value?

    $(RULE) params ;

Another moderately-high priority for me, and one I've just discovered, is to
open up the MAXLINE constant for Windows NT. I am not interested in
supporting NT3.5 (sorry!) and it is fairly easy to come up with a link
command line that exceeds the 996 characters allocated by the default Jam on
NT. If you don't feel comfortable about folding that change into FTJam, I
would be "forced" to make the modification myself, resulting in (IMO) a very
silly code fork.

-Dave