Re: Boost.Build on IBM, SGI & HP

From: Eric Ford (eford_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-10-11 10:13:39

> > The boost documentation is long.
> Are you referring to http://www.boost.org/tools/build/, or to
> http://www.boost.org/tools/build/build_system.htm ?

The combination.  First, I think anyone who bothers to write
documentation should be praised.  Obviously something powerful often
needs lots of documentation.  It's just that I and other end users
would much rather just type one word and not have to read anything
other than a short README that says "to compile type jam, to test type
jam test, to install type jam install"

> What in particular did you find to be complicated?

The only things I tried were to get it to build only one library and
to get it to build only one version of that library.  (No need to
explain how.)  Also, I tried to add a dependancy with a rule to run a
program to generate a file.

> I do need some feedback about what mechanism would be acceptable for
finding
> the build system source. A .jamrc file has been suggested, but that
begs the
> same question: "where is the .jamrc file located?" In the absence of
better
> suggestions, I intend to use an environment variable setting.

Do you mean an env variable to say where to look?  Can it have some
defaults (e.g current directory, home directory, /etc/,)?  So most
people wouldn't need to set an env variable ?  Env variables can cause
problems when you make a change since they don't synchronize across
all shells. 

> > or 'jam gcc'? Even 'jam
> > -sTOOLS="gcc"' seems too complicated.
> 
> Interesting. You're suggesting that a pseudotarget with the same
name as the
> toolset should build all targets that would be built with that
toolset? I
> like that idea, but there are a few problems with it:

Actually, I was thinking of `which gcc`, `which kcc`, `which CC`,
etc., until it found something.  I'd suggest the search be from
comercial 3rd party (e.g. KAI), to vendor provided (e.g. SGI), to
generic (eg. gcc).  I presume most people want it built with their
"best" compiler.  

> Aside from being condemned to years of debugging (that part seemed
> unneccessarily ad-hominem), I appreciated hearing your thoughts. I
would
> like to hear more from other users.

Sorry about that.  I didn't mean it to be ad-hominem.  For some reason
I assumed that came from some Jam developer.

E