Re: [jamboost] scons and bjam

From: Vladimir Prus (ghost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-06-29 02:47:05

Toon Knapen wrote:
> Continuing the discussion on using C++ and/or python for implementing
> the future bjam I have some related question that I think is very
> important to the bjam community for knowing our strong and weak points
> compared to other systems:
>
> How would you (dear bjam developers) compare the advantages and
> disadvantages of scons and bjam-v2 ? Would you consider a system based
> on scons but dealing with Jamfile's better than an 100% scons solution
> and why?

In my opinion, V2 has some advantages: 

- strong support for build variants/features
- portability of Jamfiles: you use features, not specific options of specific 
compiler
- convenient features like project requirements and usage requirements
- nice toolsets
- ... something else I've forgotten ...

The obvious advantage of SCons is use of signatures, though I'm not 100% sure 
how critical it is -- we have only one case where they would be really needed 
-- Boost.Book.

Probably, SCons performs better as a build engine -- e.g. dependencies on 
generated headers, scanning targets after they are created and so on. We have 
those two things I've described, but they are based on a non-so-ideal jam 
engine.

One thing on which I'm not sure is how SCons constructs the set of 
transformations to build the final target from sources. Maybe it's something 
we can look at.

- Volodya