Re: [boost] New name of bjam.exe

Subject: Re: [boost] New name of bjam.exe
From: Vladimir Prus (vladimir_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-07-21 16:32:12

Andrey Semashev wrote:

> On 07/20/2010 12:45 PM, Vladimir Prus wrote:
>>
>> I am sure that most of you got accustomed to typing "bjam" in console whenever you
>> want to build things. This name is old, and derives from a tool named "jam", which
>> is even older (around for maybe 20 years). However, this name is probably no longer
>> good.
> 
> Please, leave it as it is. As others have noted, the change will add
> problems to maintainers of various scripts, which I'm sure we all are
> more or less.
> 
> I'm not convinced that the change of the name we all got used to to
> whatever other name will reduce the confusion. There is quite an amount
> of information online, including articles, blogs, forum and ML posts,
> about the tool being referred to as bjam. All this information is easily
> searchable with Google (e.g. typing "bjam" brings references to bjam and
> Boost.Build at the top of the page). In fact, from my perspective, the
> name is tightly associated with Boost.Build already, and there is no
> need to come up with another alternative.
> 
> Besides, as far as I understand, the jamfiles syntax is based on the Jam
> language, so the name bjam does have its merit, unless you also want to
> switch to another language with the rename 

Unless you've missed that, a Python port of Boost.Build is progressing on
a full speed, so there will be partial switch to a different language.

> If the naming issue does arise often with users, I would suggest
> correcting the docs. Perhaps, Boost.Build and Boost.Jam docs (and, I
> suppose, libraries as such) should be just merged.

This is also planned.

- Volodya