Re: [boost] What would make tool authors happier..

Subject: Re: [boost] What would make tool authors happier..
From: Peter Dimov (lists_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-06-04 17:06:20

Daniel James wrote:
> On 4 June 2015 at 21:30, Peter Dimov <lists_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> > Daniel James wrote:
> >>
> >> On 4 June 2015 at 19:56, Peter Dimov <lists_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> >
> > ...
> >>
> >> > Walking the filesystem produces better results in the following 
> >> > cases:
> >> >
> >> > - when you have manually placed a (proposed) library in libs/ that is 
> >> > not yet a submodule
> >> > - when you have a Boost directory structure that has no Git metadata
> >>
> >> In these cases, why does your tool need to understand git modules?
> >
> >
> > It doesn't.
>
> So why does it matter where the modules are?

It doesn't matter where the modules are. It matters where the libraries are. 
To determine that, you walk the filesystem. It's much simpler if the 
directory structure is regular and libraries are libs/*. So for example you 
want to find all headers - you look at libs/*/include. You want to build all 
libraries that require building - you look for libs/*/build/Jamfile*. You 
want to test all libraries - you look for libs/*/test/Jamfile*. You want the 
failure markup - you look for libs/*/test/failure-markup.xml. You want the 
changelog - you look for libs/*/doc/changes.xml (or whatever).

The first two already work, although they do need to account for a few 
special cases.

I can't think of a use case that would need to be concerned with where the 
Git modules are, or with whether there are Git modules at all.