Newbie impression of Boost.Build v2

From: Zbynek Winkler (zwin_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-05-04 15:20:11

Here is an impression I got as a first time user.

http://boost.sourceforge.net/boost-build2/boost_build_v2.html claims to 
be "user manual" which I think it is not. First of all it is too long. 
Second, the first part gives overall view of how things work in the 
build system, which is fine. What is not fine is the fact that the 
manual cannot be read from the beginning (without going back and forth). 
One example is "Project hierarchy". It says
-----------------
For example, if [top]/Jamfile has

<include>/home/ghost/local

in requirements, then all other projects will have that in their 
requirements too.
-----------------
After going through the sources I've found out that you just cannot 
place <include>/home/ghost/local in the jamfile (or can you?). You have 
to put it in project->requirements. When reading this I had no notion 
what an "requirements" could be (or that it is something really really 
special, that it really is a "feature"), neither that it has some 
special syntax.

So... It gives the impression that the system is really cool and 
powerfull. But the more you try to do the things in the "tutorial", the 
more this impression changes to "too powerfull to be of any good" or 
"not cool at all" because you cannot just copy&paste the lines and 
expect it to work. Not even such a basic command as "bjam --version" 
(from istallation step #2) works out of the box. The catch is that the 
"bjam" needs to find the configuration files. When you happen (as me) to 
run the bjam exe from directory boost/tools/build you get some bullshit as
d:\devel\boost\boost\tools\build>bjam --version
Jamfile: No such file or directory
Jamfile: No such file or directory
...found 8 targets...

Then there is something that claims to be "Reference" where is a lot of 
theory and no facts. When I almost figured out the overall syntax of the 
jamfile I tried <runtime-link> "feature" only to find out that it is 
<link-runtime>... (found it in the msvc.jam). The <link-runtime> feature 
can be set to "shared" which finaly gave me the /MD in the command line. 
Too bad that it is giving me /MD even for debug build (instead of /MDd). 
Often mention option <threading>multi (what I kind of expected to select 
the multithreding runtime) only broke my jamfile when I added it to the 
requirements. I would expect "reference" to be a description of the 
grammar used and a list of things that can be set and how. The things 
there are now claimed to be a reference would be more a decription of 
the architecture.

Do not get me wrong. I think that the Boost.Build v2 is The Next Big 
Thing (at least for me :-)). I really like the idea (otherwise I would 
not spend the whole day today trying to get a hold of it :-)). It is 
just that the documentation is not much helpful for a boost.build newbie 
(such as me). So if you think I can help, let me know. I do not have 
much spare time but I can always at least test something here or there...

Zbynek

PS. One more thing - to find out if the build has been successful you 
have to read an awful lot of text. When 'make' fails you get nice big 
Error at the end...

-- 
<zwin at robotika.cz>
http://zw.matfyz.cz/ http://robotika.cz/
Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, Prague, Czech 
Republic