Re: [boost] CMake Announcement from Boost Steering Committee

Subject: Re: [boost] CMake Announcement from Boost Steering Committee
From: Edward Diener (eldiener_at_[hidden])
Date: 2017-07-18 19:28:10

On 7/18/2017 2:08 PM, Louis Dionne via Boost wrote:
> Boost - Dev mailing list wrote
>> Den 18-07-2017 kl. 17:14 skrev Thorsten Ottosen via Boost:
>>> Den 18-07-2017 kl. 16:44 skrev Edward Diener via Boost:
>>>> On 7/18/2017 9:12 AM, Jon Kalb via Boost wrote:
>>>
>>>>> Therefore, we, the Steering Committee, announce to the Boost
>>>>> community our desire and intent to move Boost’s build system to CMake
>>>>> for users and developers alike.
>>>>
>>>> Where are you soliciting comments and proposals from the community to
>>>> guide the process and the goals ? On this mailing list ? In the Boost
>>>> Steering Committee Google group ?
>>>
>>> Good question!
>>>
>>> I find the message from a long time member like Rene quite disturbing,
>>> to say the least.
>>
>> In case it wasn't clear, it's not what Rene says that is disturbing, but
>> that it has come so far that he has to say it.
>>
>> Where is all the discussion that led to this decision? The pros and
>> cons? The feedback from the community and members?
>>
>> kind regards
> 
> There was a lot of discussion on the list recently about various levels of
> integrations
> between Boost and CMake. A lot of interest was generated and we thought it
> was
> very positive. The intent of the message we sent was to make it clear that
> there was
> an intent to actually make something out of these proposals, not to just let
> them die
> like some previous CMake efforts have.
> 
> Please notice that the message does not impose any "way of getting there",
> nor does
> it talk about technical superiority of one solution over the other. The
> problems we believe
> Boost needs to solve are
> 
> (1) Users have a hard time integrating Boost into their build system, which
> is CMake
>        more often than not (but not always, and we're trying to please the
> majority here)
> (2) Prospective Boost developpers are sometimes driven away from submitting
> because
>        they would have to use Boost's build system, which they don't know.
> 
> I can't speak for the Steering Committee as a whole, but I believe that
> basically any solution
> that solves the above two problems would satisfy the intent of the message
> that was posted.

In that case why not have said that Boost libraries and tools will be 
supporting CMake, which I think is fair enough given the wish to form a 
consensus, but that Boost Build will continue to be developed/supported 
for those libraries and tools that still want to rely on it as an 
alternative. Given that we have people like Rene, Steven, and Thorsten, 
among others, who still work to improve Boost Build, I see such a 
decision to give up Boost Build entirely for CMake, before we even know 
if we can actually duplicate all the functionality which Boost Build 
provides in CMake, as a bad decision.

I am not against providing CMake for the user community at large, but I 
just don't think we should be throwing Boost Build away.

> 
> Louis
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
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