Re: [boost] Re: Why Jam?

From: Karl Nelson (kenelson_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-02-21 11:38:45

> > The interpreter for jamfiles is a custom program called jam, and 
> > further customized for boost usage.  The interpreter for autotools' 
> > is comprised of several programs (shell, textutils, fileutils) each 
> > of which does some part of the work.  The total size of the 
> > interpreter programs for autotools' configure scripts is probably 2 
> > megs whereas for Jam it is about 500k.
> 
> Requiring a shell is, by far, the worst culprit here, but the fact of 
> the matter is, there's no native port of most of the parts required 
> for autoconf.  You have to install cygwin to have the needed parts.
> 
> Frankly, though, even if there were a native port of all the stuff 
> required for autoconf you'd still be talking about at least 2 megs of 
> stuff that has to be installed.  Boost strapping something that large 
> isn't really an option as far as I'm concerned, and again the powers 
> that be will have problems with an installation that large.

I don't think it would be nearly that large in perl.

  
> > Autotools basically work in two layers, a developer-specific 
> > metadata layer that generates the configure file, and a 
> > user-specific layer (the configure file).  The user-specific layer 
> > does not require autoconf or automake.  Automake is a perl script 
> so 
> > adds perl to the requirements for the developer-specific layer, 
> > which is also readily available in source and binary form as a 
> > native Windows app.
> 
> The perl ports I'm aware of are intrusive installations (as they 
> probably should be), which the powers that be won't allow.  I know, 
> I've looked into using python.  I'm lucky enough (for now) to be able 
> to install it on my personal box simply because (temporarily at 
> least) I'm exempt from the monitoring that most in this company are 
> subject to.  But I couldn't extend this to include the build server.  
> Based on feedback on here, I'm not the only one in this situation.

Can I read this as "IF AND ONLY IF we have full perl equivelents of
the shell tools required to autoconf can boost use it." ?  
If so where do I send the Perl scripts?   :-)
I really really dislike Jam as the booststapping is a royal 
pain just to replicate what virtually every unix box has already.
Perl tools for cp, m4, sed, awk, sh, which just enough support
for auto* tools really should not be large or invasive.

--Karl