Re: Jamfile vs. jamfile vs. Jamfile.jam vs jamfile.jam (was... [boost]** type traits broken **)

From: Bryan W. Headley (bwheadley_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-10-29 10:26:24

David Abrahams wrote:

> Beman Dawes  writes:
>
>
> >At 12:33 AM 10/28/2002, Rene Rivera wrote:
> >
> > >> >what the preferred name for jamfiles should be from V2 onwards.
> > >> >Possibilities for V2 are: Jamfile, jamfile, Jamfile.jam, or
> >jamfile.jam.
> > >>
> > >>"jamfile" gets my vote.
> > >
> > >I personally prefer "jamfile.jam"...
> > >
> > >"jamfile" has the disadvantages that:
> > >- then we have a bunch of "Jamfile" to "jamfile" renames to ask
> >SourceForge
> > >to do.
> > >- Windows, KDE, and Gnome users don't have a convenient extension to
> >map to
> > >their editor.
> >
> >Both good points.  I think you converted me:-)
>
>
> I'm mostly convinced, but there's also the familiarity issue to
> consider. People are used to 'Makefile'. A guy just came up to me
> today and told me he put boost aside because building involved a
> program with an unfamiliar name, 'bjam'. I'm not kidding. He didn't
> look past the name :(

Things are worse than you think. Tried to build Jam from the source, and 
received all kinds of complaints from it I didn't understand. Would that 
the thing would stop immediately on error, but it kept chugging on.

After an hour of staring at the error messages, downloaded the binary 
'bjam', and ran that. The thing built a directory \r! (And failed 
building Boost as a subsequent side-effect)

Things like this keep me from wanting to learn Jam.

Yes, I finally saw a hint to it's complaints, and resorted to sed'ing 
out the \r's from the entire Boost source tree. The thing finally built. 
But now I have to manually install the headers... 'bjam install' not 
possible, or just not put into the rulefiles?

I'd rather there would be 'autoconfiscate' scripts, and a Makefile. For 
Win32 users, I'd point them to Mingw32's MSYS for a GNU 'make' and shell.

Your buddy may be less stupid than you thought. Maybe he got spanked by 
'cook' or some other make replacement...

-- 
____               .:.                 ____
Bryan W. Headley - bwheadley_at_[hidden]