Re: [boost] [Ann] Boost and Google Summer of Code 2007

From: Bjørn Roald (bjorn_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-03-04 17:08:28

Kevin Heifner wrote:
> Jeff Garland wrote:
>   
>> Stefan Seefeld wrote:
>>     
>>> Jeff Garland wrote:
>>>       
>>>> Bjørn Roald wrote:
>>>>         
>>>>> Jeff Garland wrote:
>>>>> By the way, http://www.trolltech.com has a similar solution called qmake 
>>>>> which is used in Qt.  This may or may not be more appropriate in an 
>>>>> optional add-on to Boost.Build.  
>>>>>           
>>>> Non-technical issue: MPC has a boost compatible license -- I doubt QT does.
>>>>         
>>> Unless I completely miss the point I don't think licensing issues play any
>>> role here. What is suggested is not to integrate any boost code with any Qt
>>> code, but instead to provide an interface for boost *users* to more easily
>>> access build parameters used when developing *with* boost libraries.
>>>       
>> Well, perhaps not, but in the past we've been fairly averse to requiring other 
>> tools form other sources so ultimately some parts of these systems might need 
>> to be in the boost tools tree.
>>     
>
> We have offered before to provide an initial set of MPC files and 
> to help maintain them.  If you are interested in accepting MPC 
> files into boost, please let us know.
>
> BTW, MPC comes with boost base projects to derive from to make it 
> very easy to use boost with a project.  For, example here is a 
> mpc file contents for a project that uses boost_thread and 
> boost_unit_test_framework:
>
> project : boost_unit_test_framework, boost_thread {
> }
>
>   

Typically I guess you would at least list some source files as well:

project : boost_unit_test_framework, boost_thread {
  Source_Files {
    a.cpp
    b.cpp
  }
}

But yes, they are simple enough.  Especially compared to typical IDE 
based project files.   If you compare them to Boost.Build files the 
difference is not that great.  I guess the annoying thing is that they 
pretty much reflect the same information, so the tools could at least in 
concept have been  inter operable on the same set of project files. 

> That is the complete file.  MPC uses the concept of good defaults 
> to make most mpc files very simple.
>   

So does Boost.Build :-)  A study of the format differences and 
similarities of the Jamfile and .mpc files would be interesting.  Has 
anybody looked into this?  

-- 
Bjørn Roald