Re: [jamboost] Re: help building boost with V2

From: Vladimir Prus (ghost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-09-29 11:27:25

David Abrahams wrote:

> > I'm sorry, I don't understand your attitude. You say you're
> > interested in contributing to V2. You're +1 on removing
> > property-adjuster, I'm -/+0. And you don't seem to care about
> > removing it yourself, even though it's small and easy change.
>
> I just did it.

Great.

> The thing is, when I was working hard to understand the architecture
> so I could make a contribution, removing property-adjuster would've
> made a difference to my life because it would've simplified a very
> complicated part of the system. Now, I've forgotten so much that the
> only difference it made is that I'll have a slightly easier time
> re-learning it.

Ok, I understand you. But it means that removing property-adjuster would have 
helped only if it was done very quickly, and we're facing the communication 
speed problem, because of timezone difference.

> > Maybe, you could clarify what kind of contributions you're
> > interested in, and how we can make architecture good enough to allow
> > those contributions
>
> Ali and I made some suggestions for reworking things several months
> ago, but I guess you were unconvinced that they would actually result
> in improvements. 

Some of them are worth implementing, and I though that way from the start. As 
for others, the biggest problem with me was that the proposals were 
incomplete and Ali had no time to complete them. In particular, I was *very* 
interested in better targets hierarchy proposal, but discussions never 
finished in anything tangible.

> I suggested what I considered to be an architectural
> improvement to the generators system and even coded a prototype of the
> search mechanism in Python. I'm not saying that you were unreceptive;
> I admit that it would be a major undertaking to retrofit something
> like that into the system. The fact remains that generators have
> complicated and somewhat special-cased logic, and it's a difficult
> project (or it was last time I tried) to build a new one.

I think simple 1<->1 generators are quite simple (there's a tuturial in docs 
about creating a generator). As for more global changes --- well, you said 
yourself that your prototypes is more or less complete and it's better to 
settle other issues first.

> I added a rule parameter type declaration system a while back because
> Ali and I decided it would improve readability and error-checking.
> Has it seen any use?

No, just because to make it live someone would have to go though code and add 
type declarations. I did not use it for new code because IMO it would make a 
difference only in property-list vs. property-set case, and all new code 
users property-set. Besides, I'm worried about performance impact.

> > except by making a number of comitts, each of them makes a small
> > difference. As you put it, it sounds like you won't contribute
> > anything unless it makes a big difference
>
> No, it's not that; I was just explaining why I hadn't bothered to
> make the change yet. I have other things going on and as you said,
> you're +/-0 on it so I didn't think it mattered all that much.

Okay.

> > and a good architecture is definitely required to make a big
> > change. The problem if that as long as architecture is really good,
> > all which remains is writing various toolsets, and there's little
> > place for big changes.
>
> I'm not so sure. I think we need a python.jam (is that a toolset?)
> and testing support at the very least. 

I'm just adding more and more libraries to status/Jamfile.v2 at the moment, 
being at iterator right now. Hopefully testing will work on gcc very soon, 
and on msvc in not so distant future.

As for python, I think I've managed to create extension module on windows, and 
there were only one kluge demaning better solution. So this is possible as 
well.

> I think the ability to extend
> generators and file types easily is important, too.

Could you be more specific? What else is needed in addition to 

http://boost.sourceforge.net/boost-build2/doc/extending.html

is needed?

- Volodya