Re: [boost] Boost building with CMake

From: Larry Evans (cppljevans_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-05-09 12:38:47

On 05/09/2007 11:05 AM, Eric Niebler wrote:
> Bill Hoffman wrote:
[snip]
>>Several people on the CMake list have volunteered to help, and
>>Kitware is willing to put about 2 man weeks of effort into the conversion.
> 
> 
> Wow! This is a very generous and exciting offer. Thanks, Bill!
> 

Ditto on the thanks!

[snip]
> I guess I can start the list, and others can chime in. This is from 
> http://www.boost.org/tools/build/v1/build_system.htm#design_criteria:
> 
[snip]
> I'd also add:
> 
> * Ability to cleanly integrate 3rd party tools (eg. so that we can use 
> CMake to build Boost's documentation, which uses doxygen, docbook, 
> xsltproc, Apache fop, etc., etc.)

Also the output directory for these tools should not contain the
selected toolset's compiler name:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.build/7276

(Maybe this has been corrected in current boost.build, but
I'm guessing that a "typical" initial attempt to adapt CMake
to boost's needs might suffer the same problem. )

> * support for Boost's automatic linking feature.
> * Ability to define custom build variants, (eg., so I can build a 
> library with FOO defined, and the resulting lib gets a different name.)
> * Easy to add tests: compile, run, link, compile-fail, link-fail

Also easy to just run part of the compiler (e.g. the preprocessor)
and format the result (with e.g. indent) in order to ease debugging
the preprocessor library.

-thanks
Larry