Re: [boost] Stop on first error

Subject: Re: [boost] Stop on first error
From: Vladimir Prus (vladimir_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-03-15 03:58:29

John Maddock wrote:

>> Presently, when building Boost, the build process does not stop if an
>> error
>> has occurred. This is behaviour we inherited, and it differs from every
>> other build system out there. We had quite a number of users confused
>> where
>> build ends with "failed N targets", with the original error scrolled
>> away --
>> it is not apparent what has caused the error, and often, the error is not
>> even
>> available from console program history.
>>
>> While experienced users might prefer being able to kick a build, go to
>> lunch,
>> and then fix a couple of failures in the middle of the build, ordinary
>> users
>> don't like it so much. So, how about we do what the rest of the world
>> does,
>> and stop build of C++ Boost on the first error?
> 
> Two comments here:
> 
> 1) I'm presently using a "compile" test to decide whether some other targets
> should be built or not - I'd like something like this to continue to be
> available - preferably as a proper "configure" target.  I believe the
> serialization lib is doing something similar too.
> 2) We shouldn't stop building lib X just because lib Y doesn't build (when
> installing Boost).  Users of less umm.. versatile.. compilers shouldn't have
> the whole build stop just because they can't build some of the more
> "heavyweight" parts of Boost.
> 
> So while the behavior takes a bit of getting used to - it does have it's
> uses.

Well, it has it's uses, but the burden of explaining this behaviour is on us.
If default behaviour is stop on error, then users who want something else can
look up the doc for the proper switch.

- Volodya