Re: [boost] A set of individual libraries vs. One big library

Subject: Re: [boost] A set of individual libraries vs. One big library
From: troy d. straszheim (troy_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-01-22 10:48:52

Thomas Klimpel wrote:
> Anis Benyelloul wrote:
>> PS. But the page talks about using CMake (i.e replacing bjam???)
> Aren't we
>> mixing two problems? (the build system used vs. the way libraries are
> organized)
> 
> I guess CMake is not as powerful as bjam, and therefore requires the
> libraries to be more modularized. But this is not really the fault of
> CMake, since it only generates the build-environments for a variety of
> existing build tools (like Visual Studio, KDevelop, eclipse, "classic"
> unix make, ...), so it somehow has to limit the allowed non-modularity
> to what the "weakest" of the supported build-environments supports.

Actually, boost-cmake can build boost 'modularized' or as a monolith, and can do 
the modularization without the use of any external tools (other than cmake 
itself).  This is independent of what build tool (unix make, VS, etc) is used. 
All that is required is to move some directories around and tweak include paths 
accordingly.   IIRC the process of putting in the modularization code revealed a 
few interesting circular dependencies as well.

Given that it is pretty easy to reconfigure the build environment to handle a 
modularized boost (this shouldn't be hard in bjam either), I agree that the 
choice of build tool and this 'modularization' are mostly orthogonal issues (the 
hard part is to comb the knots out of the tree of intermodule dependencies).

-t