Boost.Build suitability check

From: pfrants (patrick_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-08-26 04:03:21

Hi,

First of all I am not sure wether this is the right place for a
question about the suitability of Boost.Build for our needs. I did
see a reference to news.gmane.org also.

I have tried JAM in the past and like it's automatic dependency
checking and rules based approach very much, not to mention the GLOB
rule! It took too much tweaking however to handle the directory
structure we use.

Our directory structure is as follows:

Root/
Exe1/
Exe1Main.cpp
Library1/
Library1Project1/
File1.cpp
File2.cpp
FileN.cpp
Hdr/
Library1Project1/
File1.h
File1.inl
File2.h
File2.inl
FileN.h
FileN.inl

Directly under the root directories exist for both executable and
library source code. Each executable depends upon one or more of the
libraries. Libraries are divided into projects.

We have one special requirement: WE DON'T WANT TO COMPILE OUR C++
CODE INTO LIBRARY FILES. The executables should link directly with
the object files. The rationale for this is that we use a lot of
self-registering static objects and they don't get initialized when
they are in a library. Another solution would be to solve the problem
in the source code itself by referencing empty initializer functions
in each of the files from ExeMain.cpp.

Can Boost.Build handle this elegantly or do I have to give up most of
it's advantages to handle the no-library requirement?

I would like to have simple rules like this one (pseudocode :-)) :

Main Exe1 : Library1/*/*.cpp Library2/*/*.cpp Exe1/Exe1Main.cpp ; 

Patrick Frants