Re: [boost] configure (Was: Building Boost 1.34.0 libraries with bjam)

From: Doug Gregor (dgregor_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-05-01 16:22:24

On Apr 30, 2007, at 3:29 PM, Vladimir Prus wrote:
> Richard Hadsell wrote:
>> First, the environment variables seemed to have no effect on the
>> user-config.jam.  When I ran bjam afterward, it still used the  
>> default
>> installed g++ on my system.  So in user-config.jam I changed  
>> 'using gcc
>> ;' to 'using gcc : 3.4.4 : /opt/gcc344/bin/g++344 ;'.  (This was  
>> similar
>> to a 'using' statement that I saw in a comment in
>> tools/build/v2/user-config.jam.)
>
> I'm starting to wonder if "configure" script being shipped with  
> Boost is
> a good idea. The idea is to make standard "./configure && make"  
> work, however,
> as above posting shows, "configure" is associated with various
> expected behaviour, and unless we want to duplicate all such  
> behaviour,
> we can end up confusing users.

While we should probably fix this behavior of "configure" to do the  
same thing as an autoconf-generated "configure", I don't think that  
this problem makes having a "configure" script any less of a good  
idea. The "configure" script handles the common case very well; it's  
much easier for people accustomed to *nix software than bjam will  
ever be.

Let me put it this way: since I wrote the "configure" script for  
Boost, the number of times I've been told that Boost is too hard to  
build (e.g., at conferences and workshops) has decreased  
*drastically*. bjam is powerful, but it's non-traditional. For all of  
the failures of autotools (and there are many!), *nix programmers  
understand how to build autotools-based projects and can do it very,  
very easily. "./configure && make && make install" is enough for the  
vast majority of the open source projects in the world.

        - Doug