Re: [boost] MPC and Boost Build (was Boost and Google Summer of Code 2007)

From: Jeff Garland (jeff_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-03-06 10:04:05

Bjørn Roald wrote:

I'll just comment on the options that I think have potential.  The others 
probably won't fly given that bjam isn't going to be dumped as the primary 
developer interface at this stage.

>> 2. Something is created that can generate MPC files from Jamfiles.
>>   
> 
> This would be useful.  MPC itself does not need to be in the boost 
> distro for this scheme to work.  All that is needed is that something 
> can generate the .mpc files.  One natural choice would be an add-on to 
> bbv2 since it already parses the Jamfiles.

Agree that this would be handy and would go over well with fans of boost 
build.  If you took a particular library it would somehow have to get all the 
rules from the tools/build/v2/*.jam files for a given environment to produce 
the needed mpc information.  The potential problem I see is that MPC embeds 
some of this same information in it's template files...so you might have to 
'templatize the mpc templates' so the nitty gritty details of toolset 
configurations can be exposed.

>> 3. Maintain two sets of files: MPC and Jamfiles.
>>   
> 
> I prefer to ignore this option until other options are tried.

Probably not.

>> 4. (added after reading the last section of the email)
>>     Add Jamfile input file support to MPC.
>>
>>   
> Yes, If the semantics of the information in .mpc files and Jamfiles are 
> close, this may be feasible.  Would be fun to try it out anyway.  Think 
> I need better understanding of the two file formats first.

MPC isn't a build system, so it's a bit different.  None-the-less all the 
details of how to configure compile options and such need to be in the MPC and 
Jamfiles.  Both MPC and Jam put this mostly behind the scenes with a good set 
of defaults.  So, this also might be another valid approach.

Jeff