Re: [boost] Why Boost.Build?

Subject: Re: [boost] Why Boost.Build?
From: Emil Dotchevski (emildotchevski_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-03-29 20:15:31

On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 5:04 PM, Dave Abrahams <dave_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> At Sun, 27 Mar 2011 11:34:43 -0400,
> Edward Diener wrote:
>
>> When software is very good, but very complicated, it is often hard to
>> get developers to realize that it is to their interest to explain the
>> software as methodically and as thoroughly as they should.
>
> Yes, but there is an alternative: simpler software (where one element
> of simplicity is similarity to, and a foundation of, tools and
> paradigms with which many people are already familiar).
>
>> They often resent it because they have produced this wonderful
>> software system which they understand, and worked very hard on, and
>> they can not understand why others should not understand it as well
>> as they do with the explanation they produce to suit their own
>> needs. I honestly believe this is the mindset into which the
>> developers of Boost Build have settled. The system itself is
>> wonderful, and does a tremendous number of things automatically for
>> the developer, but when the developer needs to do something outside
>> the normal way the Boost Build system operates, it is next to
>> impossible finding this information in the documentation, because so
>> much is missing or just assumes that the programmer should somehow
>> know.
>
> Part of that is because the design tries to do too much.

I actually don't think that the design is overly complicated. Creating
a build script that works on many different platforms is not a simple
problem (if you don't need a portable build script, there are many
simpler solutions, for example it only takes a couple of minutes to
throw the Boost Thread cpp files in a Visual Studio project if you
need to use boost.thread on Windows.)

My only problem with Boost Build is that it is oh so slow.

Emil Dotchevski
Reverge Studios, Inc.
http://www.revergestudios.com/reblog/index.php?n=ReCode