Re: [scons-devel] SCons BOF at O'Reilly OSCon 2003

From: David Abrahams (gclbb-jamboost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-06-17 11:04:57

Rene Rivera <grafik666_at_[hidden]> writes:

> [2003-06-17] David Abrahams wrote:
>
>>Vladimir Prus <ghost_at_[hidden]> writes:
>>
>>>> (BTW, are you guys aware that Ralf W. Grosse-Kunstleve is already using
>>>> or shipping Boost, I believe, with an SCons-based build system for
>>>> cctbx, his Computational Crystallography ToolBox? I guess he has about
>>>> twenty lines of Python code that parse up the .jam or .bjam or whatever
>>>> files and turn them into calls into the SCons build engine. Might be a
>>>> useful starting point to look at how someone else has done some of the
>>>> basic stuff.)
>>>
>>> Need to look. Since Python version of Boost.Build is only distant
>>> plan for now, we'd have a lot of Jam code by the time it
>>> works. Another alternative I was thinking about was extending Python
>>> with Jam. So, you'd have Python function "compile_jam_file", or
>>> something.
>>
>>That sounds like we'd be giving up many/most of the advantages of
>>Python. Consider Jam's poor data abstraction capability. We
>>wouldn't even be able to touch regular Python classes.
>
> Perhaps at this point, since it is far of, and I think other design changes
> are on the table...
>
> Would using some other scripting language be an option? Like Lua which has a
> very low embedding cost.

I'd much rather be using Python since I know that Scons is
thoughtfully designed and implemented. I don't want to repeat the
work they've done.

> Could we rewrite the parts of Jam that are usefull, like the dependency
> engine, in C++ and use them in library form?

That very thing is one that I'm most anxious to replace with the
Scons work!

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
www.boost-consulting.com