Re: Boost.Build on IBM, SGI & HP

From: Eric Ford (eford_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-10-11 11:11:59

> > > 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.
> Ah; what rule was that?

I don't know the jam terminology.  With make it would have been

foo:  bar baz
        bar baz > foo

> > Can it have some
> > defaults (e.g current directory, home directory, /etc/,)?
> Sure, but notions such as home directory and /etc aren't portable.
> If you can tell me how to choose reasonable defaults for various
platforms,
> it's easy to set them up.

Don't unices and windows both give users home directories?  Is there
some other platform you're supporting?  I thought the windows
equivalent of /etc was the registry.

> I think that depends on who the person is. I'm primarily trying to
serve
> developers with Boost.Build, so that they have a chance of
installing a pile
> of compilers and testing their code on all of them without knowing
too much
> about the details of any one. I figure that if we can do that, it
should be
> easy to take the very few steps needed to make build/test/install
trivial
> for users.

Ok, that makes some sense.  I was under the impression that
Boost.Build was meant to build boost, not be a tool for developers to
use with their own projects.  

> Is "jam gcc" really too much to ask of users?

No.