Re: [jamboost] Re: Removing dots from toolset namesHo

From: Jürgen Hunold (hunold_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-10-07 01:51:00

Hi Aleksey !

On Wednesday 06 October 2004 17:35, Aleksey Gurtovoy wrote:
> Jürgen Hunold writes:

> The original rationale was "to ensure file and directory names are
> relatively portable":
> http://www.boost.org/more/lib_guide.htm#Directory_structure.

Thanks ! I overlooked this.

> Beman might be able to clarify whether ISO 9660/Level 2 requirements
> in particular were one of the motivating factors back then or not,
> but currently those are the primary driving force for getting
> Boost codebase to conform to these rules: We want to be able
> to put a Boost distribution on a CD in the unpacked form, and for
> that CD to be readable on the maximum number of platforms.

> > > intel-win32-7.1-vc6-stlport-4.5.3-tools.jam: filename > 31 chars,
> > > filename contains more than one dot character ('.')
> > > intel-win32-7.1-vc6-tools.jam:
> >
> > Some of these toolsets exist in current 1.31.0 with _more_ than one
> > dot. Take vc7.1-stlport-tools.jam for example.
>
> Sure. The requirements weren't strictly inforced until now.

Yes, I see.

> The changes are not that drastic, but it's a reasonable question to
> ask. Ignoring the fact that we already have nonconforming names
> fixing which requires some work, IMO all the current requirements
> except 31-character limit are not hindering us in any significant
> way, are easy to satisfy, and in general have a good cost/benefit
> ratio.
>
> I don't feel strongly about maximum length of 31, in particular since
> MacOS 9 is pretty much dead, and we _are_ somewhat restrained by the
> limit. Being able to read a Boost CD on, let's say, Linux versions
> released before 1999 is definitely going to be appreciated by
> _somebody_, but there is a certain cost to that, and personally I'm
> starting to feel that may be it's not worth it. But then, as a
> release manager who has to take care of this issue, I'm biased.

I've got this impression, too.

My old PPC-6100-Mac is rotting in a corner ... ;-(((

I don't want to spoil the release, but did you take a look at the 
BoostBook generated docs ? 
At least BBv2 generates files like 
"bbv2.reference.buildprocess.alternatives.html"

This will not work when someone tries to ship pre-built documentation on 
pure ISO-9660 CD, either. 
And I thought that a release tarball should contain a pre-built 
documentation because no-one can be expected to install all the 
necessary components to build it.
 
Do you/we want to change this, too ? 
And have *lots* of cryptic, human-unreadable file names ?

When we discuss this further, we should do it on Boost-Mailing-List

Just some thoughts.

Yours,

Jürgen

-- 
* Dipl.-Math. Jürgen Hunold ! Institut für Verkehrswesen, Eisenbahnbau
* voice: ++49 511 762-2529 ! und -betrieb, Universität Hannover  
* fax : ++49 511 762-3001 ! Appelstrasse 9a, D-30167 Hannover
* hunold_at_[hidden] ! www.ive.uni-hannover.de