boost test wish list

From: rameysb (Ramey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-04-22 12:25:21

Here my wish list for tbe bjam/build/... etc system. (I don't really 
expect a response to this but if someone wants to - a separate thread 
please)

a) the following attributes conspire to drive me crazy. I don't know 
what to do about it.
i) bjam usage and operation is totally opaque to me.
ii) bjam, or something like it, is absolutely necessary for a project 
like this (serialization library).

b) I would like to be able to pass command line arguments to bjam and 
have bjam consider these arguments in the contest of some sort of if 
statements. Its probably possible but I can't figure out how to do 
it.

c) when I run test/compiler_status script from a windoz *.bat file it 
seems that it doesn't flag runtime failures as test failures. If I 
run it from an MKS korn shell script it works ok. At least that is 
what I think is happening. It too hard to figure stuff like this out.

d) the compiler_status html table build is a good start. But not 
quite there. The problem is doesn't handle multiple combinations 
very well. What I would like is:

compiler_status [-rows list] [-columns column]

list := <null>
list := list | attribute
attribute := compiler | test | toolset | libtype | debug/release mode 
| archivetype

list := <null> // implies all attribute not otherwise mentioned

the resulting table would be pivoted according to the command line so 
that the command line 

compiler_status -rows test archive -columns toolset debug/releasemode

would produce a table that looks like:

test archive | VC 7.1 | gcc 3.2 |
|debug|release|debug|release| ...
==== =======
Map text |
xml |
Ptrs text |
xml |
...

Of course I realize that part of this is probably not possible 
(archive) but the rest is attainable. I also realize that this is 
really of interest only to a few people so the effort isn't 
justifiable. BUT since, I'm just wishing I might as well be bold.

Robert Ramey