M4 plan

From: Vladimir Prus (ghost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-05-26 07:01:39

Since M3 is out, I'd like to do some planning for M4. Of course, it's a bit 
risky, since Dave plans to rearrange the whole V2 source tree, and Ali is 
planning to refactor targets hierarchy, but I still hope we can get some end
user functionality. 

In short, I plan to release M4 on a fixed date, say June 11 (about three week 
from M3).

The list of things that I plan to do is:

1. Do some improvements for targets handling

- need to be able to define targets everywhere, not only in
Jamfiles. Motivation: modules like "qt" should be able to
define targets for libraries they represent, not add compiler flags
directly. This would also provide neceessary infrastructure for
one-directory projects without Jamfiles (i.e only with project-root.jam)
- rename <dependency> to <uses>. The above change is blocking
the rename (since QT already employs <uses>)
- Allow anonymous targets and "inline" target declaration. One should be
able to write
test-suite foo : [ test a : a.cpp ] [ test b : b.cpp ] ;
This is preparation for Boost testing framework (hopefully the next
milestone)

2. Do some improvement for header scanning

- improve an efficiency a bit
- generated headers should be scanned for includes
- dependency between two generated files should work

3. Toolset implementation
- make STLPort work on more system than gcc
- implement GNU gettext support. 

I would not find to tweak this list somewhat, if that will help Dave and Ali. 
Also, Ali, your requirements list included "real fake targets". Can you 
clarify what was meant. I probably can address it.

- Volodya