Re: [boost] [cmake] Pull request announcement

Subject: Re: [boost] [cmake] Pull request announcement
From: Roger Leigh (rleigh_at_[hidden])
Date: 2018-09-14 15:40:20

On 14/09/18 15:05, Alexander Grund via Boost wrote:
> The major problem I see are the variants.
> 
> - b2 can build multiple variants in one go (static, dynamic, runtimes...)
> - Encoding these variants has to be reflected in the target names/aliases

CMake fundamentally doesn't work this way.  Nor do any other build 
systems I'm aware of.  It's unique to b2.  I do not think it useful to 
require this of any replacement build system in consequence.  Especially 
when it's an initial minimalistic support as proposed here.

The variant naming strategy brings a lot of pain and it's something I 
personally always turn off when I can, because all those name variants 
result in having to hardcode b2-specific mappings for all the 
combinations in every build system other than b2, **because only b2 
defines the names this way**.  It's truly horrible, and I don't know why 
it's liked so much within the boost community.  Am I the only one who 
suffers so much from it having to integrate it with other systems on 
multiple platforms?

Regards,
Roger