Re: [boost] Re: Why Jam?

From: Karl Nelson (kenelson_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-02-21 12:04:11

> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Karl Nelson" <kenelson_at_[hidden]>
> 
> > 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?   :-)
> 
> As I've said before, please feel free to submit any full replacement for
> Boost.Build that meets the design goals, if you're willing to take over
> development of our build/test systems.
> 
> > 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.
> 
> Bootstrapping Jam is much harder than it should be, but only because we
> haven't given it much attention. There's not that much going on and most of
> the problems are easily soluble. If that's your major complaint I suggest
> you volunteer to address it.

I doubt I would be a good volunteer for that.  I have never succeeded in
getting boost jam to bootstrap correctly, but instead insert makefiles
and autoconf scripts as needed to compile boost components.  But then
I am running windows with cygwin which is much too heavy a platform
to expect other users to use.

I would recommend the if you are planning to continue to use jam,
make an autoconf script which builds jam and sets it loose to build
boost so that us poor unix guys don't have to ponder a boot strap
procedure when all we want is to hit  "configure; make; make install"

--Karl