Re: [boost] CMake Announcement from Boost Steering Committee

Subject: Re: [boost] CMake Announcement from Boost Steering Committee
From: paul (pfultz2_at_[hidden])
Date: 2017-07-18 19:56:56

On Tue, 2017-07-18 at 06:12 -0700, Jon Kalb via Boost wrote:
> The libraries produced by the Boost community have had a greater impact on
> the way that the C++ community writes code than any other library
> implementation. The focus of the Boost community will always be on the
> libraries, but it is undeniable that we are dependent on and often limited
> by the infrastructure of our trade. Years ago, the move to Git was
> contentious; yet, it was required to improve development. In a similar vein
> our build system has become an impediment for many developers and users,
> existing and prospective.
> 
> Â 
> 
> 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. We are soliciting comments and proposals from the
> community to guide the process and the goals. Our desire is that the
> community can come to consensus by the end of the calendar year with a
> vision of supporting users and developers.

Ultimately, we want to support both use cases for cmake:

* Prebuilt libraries through `find_package`
* Integrated builds through `add_subdirectroy`

I have setup an initial build of cmake that supports this. Of course, there is
more work to be done. To make these changes, I setup scripts that can be used
to generate cmake from mustache templates. This will make it easier to
experiment with different cmake designs as we move forward:

https://github.com/pfultz2/boost-cmake

I mainly was following Daniel Pfeifer's Effective CMake, which is why the
template directory is called effective. However, I am working on some modules
to help generate configuration and to help provide some of the other missing
pieces from boost.build. It can also help reduce the repitition. I would like
to explore this option more as well with community feedback.Â