Re: [boost] Why Boost.Build?

Subject: Re: [boost] Why Boost.Build?
From: Olaf van der Spek (olafvdspek_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-03-30 03:47:56

On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 9:23 AM, Mathias Gaunard
<mathias.gaunard_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> Just a quick word to say that after I've done a lot of work with CMake, some
> non-trivial, I've come to fully agree with you.
>
> Setting up a single configuration in an outside directory with CMake and
> building it there makes things much simpler than the Boost.Build paradigm of
> building everything at once whenever you want to write simple code and let
> the user configure it to get what he wants.
> It's simply less overwhelming to only have to consider one process at a
> time.
> The separation between procedural code executed by cmake at configure time
> and the resolving of targets with dependencies by make at build time is also
> a great plus: that allows to have easy scripting within the CMakeLists.txt
> themselves.
>
> I'm actually quite looking forwarding to seeing the scripting capabilities
> of Boost.Build with the Python rewrite.
>
> What I'm still missing from CMake is the many high-level and
> high-portability features of Boost.Build.
> With CMake I often find myself writing my own modules to portably enable
> some flags etc.

CMake is too flexible. You can do a lot inside CMakelists itself but
due to that CMake itself can't be improved easily.

IMO the simple case should be simple and 90% of the apps should be
buildable with the simple case.

-- 
Olaf