Re: [boost] [ot] choosing a build system

Subject: Re: [boost] [ot] choosing a build system
From: Beren Minor (beren.minor+boost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-05-10 05:45:36

> My understanding is that both CMake and Premake are meta-build system, they
> don't build anything, only generate build scripts for your favorite tools
> (make,MSVS, etc. )

To be honest, it actually matters if you care about integration of the
build system with other tools (ie: if it is able to generate
Eclipse/VS project files instead of plain old Makefiles), but in my
opinion this does not come first when looking at the advantages of a
build system (you should be able to configure the IDE to use any build
system instead of the opposite).

What matters to me is what you have to write in order to describe the
way your project can be built. I don't want to lose days writing CMake
rules to support this system or this compiler, putting the right flags
and building the right targets, I want to spend a few minutes writing
simple build rules, and spec the rest of these days writing my CPP
code to make it support all the compilers and OSes the build system
can address out of the box.

Boost.Build allows the user to describe the targets in a very
high-level fashion, without having to dive into details or compiler
specifics. Whereas with CMake you have to write low level rules,
explicitly building shared or static (or both if you write both rules)
version of a library, checking compiler capabilities, checking what is
the OS where you are, etc...

-- 
Beren Minor