Re: Can we create boost-config

From: Дмитрий Архипов (grisumbras_at_[hidden])
Date: 2021-09-06 13:09:57

A significant difference between generating a CMake config module and a .pc
file is that CMake config modules (usually) declare targets and set their
properties. .pc files contain actual flags to pass to a compiler. I've
skimmed through boost-install.jam and it appears to convert b2 properties
to CMake properties. For .pc files one would have to either pick a compiler
for a similar translation or implement some mechanism in b2 to be able to
do it for any compiler. In the latter case, most likely every compiler
toolset module would have to be updated to support that.

пн, 6 сент. 2021 г., 14:53 Andrey Semashev via Boost <boost_at_[hidden]
>:

> On 9/6/21 2:41 PM, Дмитрий Архипов via Boost wrote:
> > пн, 6 сент. 2021 г., 14:03 Sreeraj K via Boost <boost_at_[hidden]>:
> >
> >> *[I initialially raised this question in
> >> https://github.com/boostorg/boost/issues/548
> >> <https://github.com/boostorg/boost/issues/548>, but @mclaw recommended
> >> this
> >> mailing list.]*
> >>
> >> Similar to many other packages (eg: curl, krb5, pcre, xml2, xslt etc..),
> >> can we also ship boost-config that would provide the installation
> options ?
> >>
> >> We can probably start with something like this ?
> >>
> >> $ /usr/bin/boost-config --help
> >> Usage: boost-config [ options ]
> >>
> >> Options:
> >>    --cflags             print compiler options
> >>    --ldflags            print linker options
> >>    --prefix             print the boost prefix
> >>    --version            print the boost version
> >>    --help               print this usage summary
> >>
> >> $ /usr/bin/boost-config --version
> >> 1.66.0
> >> $ /usr/bin/boost-config --cflags
> >> -I/usr/include
> >> $ /usr/bin/boost-config --ldflags
> >> -L/usr/lib64 -Wl,-R/usr/lib64
> >>
> > This sounds like a pkg-config package. In fact, several projects moved
> from
>
> > such custom scripts to pkg-config.
>
> >
>
> > Anyway, the main problem here is to make the build system (b2) output
> those
>
> > flags in a parseable manner. If that was implemented, it could be used to
>
> > make pkg-config packages, CMake config modules, etc.
>
> >
>
> > Another problem is that different boost libraries will require different
>
> > build flags to use them, so you'll actually need e.g.
> boost-thread-config,
>
> > boost-filesystem-config (or boost-thread.pc and boost-filesystem.pc if
>
> > pkg-config is used).
>
>
> I agree that pkg-config is the right way. I believe, we're already
> producing CMake scripts for aiding find_package, but that is limited to
> CMake usage.
>
> There's this old ticket:
>
> https://svn.boost.org/trac10/ticket/1094
>
> I'm not sure if there was any real progress since then.
>
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