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From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-05-23 07:44:05


The docs for Boost.Build are clearly getting a lot better, but I'm still
having a lot of trouble finding out how to do even the simplest tasks.

The problem is that much of the documentation is reference-oriented rather
than task-oriented. So to do something like build a variant, the reader
must go to one place to find out what a variant is, another to find out how
to specify a variant on the command line, yet another place to find out
what variants are available, and so forth.

Task-oriented documentation would, in one place, identify the steps the
user needs to execute to accomplish the task. If the description of a step
is at all complex, there is a link to the reference docs for that step.

For example, the user docs might have a section:

How to do a release build
-------------------------

To do a "release" build, rather than the default "debug" style
builds, invoke the build like this: bjam ...

This is an example of a build variant. ["build variant" is a link]
See List of Common Variants for other build variants. ["List of
Common Variants" is a link]

Here are the particular tasks I need to accomplish, yet can't because they
involve pulling together so may different pieces of the current
documentation:

* How to I specify an additional compiler switch for one compiler from the
bjam command line? (I want to see the effect of running the regression
tests with an additional compiler switch.)

* I want to add an additional compiler switch for all compiles with a
certain compiler. What do I add to the toolset?

* I want to add an additional compiler switch for compiles with version
1.23 or later of a certain compiler. What do I add to the toolset?

--Beman

 


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