Re: [boost] CMake Announcement from Boost Steering Committee

Subject: Re: [boost] CMake Announcement from Boost Steering Committee
From: Edward Diener (eldiener_at_[hidden])
Date: 2017-07-19 21:14:10

On 7/19/2017 4:46 PM, Oliver Kowalke via Boost wrote:
> As mentioned before - it is not only your cmake port, all presented
> boost-cmake files have ported only fraction of the required functionality.
> For instance feature tests used in Jamfile to test for presence/absence of
> some C++ features to control the build.
> If it's so easy to do it with Cmake I'm wondering why it wasn't done.
> I've the impression that only the easy parts of Jamfile have been ported.
> The difficult parts are left ...

Boost Build has the ability to run a 'program' and change the logic of 
what is to be built, or how something is to be built, based on the 
return value of that program. I do not know CMake well enough but I am 
assuming that CMake also has such a feature, else it would really be 
deficient IMO. That is essentially what Boost Config offers and Boost 
Predef offers and my briefly discussed Cxxd library also offered, 
through the facility in Boost Build which allows this. Porting Boost 
Config and Boost Predef to use CMake would have to port this ability 
also in an easy to use way, since other libraries also depend on the 
Boost Config and Boost Predef facilities when they use Boost Build for 
their purposes.

> 
> As Klemens already mentioned, I'm missing a discussion about the
> requirements of the boost build system and a comparison of  pros/cons of
> other build systems on the ML.