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From: Toon Knapen (toon.knapen_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-10-12 03:45:14


Jeff Garland wrote:

>>>Really I can design core schema and real build for gcc (Linux,
>>>Solaris). And, may be, build for VC6 with nmake. Also I can write
>>>options for aCC compiler (HP's, HP-UX), but can't check now
>>>whether it really work.
>>>
>>>If this has some sense, I can start.
>>>
>
> If you are really considering a make-based approach, I might suggest that there
> is probably some group of users that would accept gnu make instead of nmake on
> Windows (If not, I'm sure they will speak up now).

gnu make is certainly no option. It has many more features compared to
the 'standard' make. Thus once you start using gmake, you can forget
about compatibility with 'standard' make.

Although linux has gmake by default and IIRC SGI's make is gmake
compatible, most unix pre-installed make's are not (e.g. HP-UX). Thus
most users (windows, hp, ... ) would still need to install gmake.
And from experience I can tell you that this is much more difficult
(even impossible for some) then installing Jam. Just look at the
platforms Jam supports : it's _amazing_.

> I understand that this
> violates some of the criteria set by Dave. However, gmake is easily obtained
> for windows and a the core of make rules that can be shared will be much higher
> if the same make engine is utilized (I haven't looked at Jam yet, but I presume
> this is a key advantage of this approach). This doesn't necessarily satisfy the
> MAC folks....

For MAC users it;s becoming easy to use gmake because of the BSD kernel.

Nevertheless, I have quite some experience building multi-platform
build-tools and can tell you that we never came close to what Dave has
done with Jam
(I even recently convinced someone very critical of 'non-standard' tools
to use Jam because of its support for Windows _and_ unix : we made the
switch in one day while normally setting up the project files would take
him more with _every_ compile on windoze).

I can understand people might find it hard to install/use Jam. But
allmost all features are there, now it's just a question of improving
the ease-of-use. And I'm sure that in the near future it will be as easy
as configure ; make ; make install to use it while being more easy for
the library developers compared to using make.

t


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