Re: [jamboost] What is the point of project-root.jam/Jamroot?

From: Vladimir Prus (ghost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-12-27 05:10:49

On Monday 27 December 2004 11:31, David Abrahams wrote:
> Having read through all the Boost.Build documentation, I can't
> understand why it's important to have this file/distinction anymore.
> What is the point of searching upward for that file upon startup? It
> seems to me that a more sensible approach would be to search upward for
> parent projects of any project that declares itself to have a subproject
> ID:
>
> project my-project/foo ;
>
> would cause a search upward for a parent Jamfile, whereas
>
> project my-project ;
>
> would not.

I don't agree. After all, project-ids are completely optional. I don't think 
we should go back to requiring use to specify the exact relative location of 
a project w.r.t. project root.

> The current situation where subproject IDs can be entirely unrelated to
> project structure is highly counterintuitive. Why should this be possible:
>
> Directory Project ID
> foo quanset/hut
> foo/bar blackguard
> foo/bar/baz old/socks
> foo/bar/boo tired/horse
>
> ??

I don't know, the names don't make any sense indeed. However, I also don't 
know why we should prevent a project id to be "libs/ipa", even if Jamfile is 
located in "libs/Optimization/Scalar/ipa" directory. 

> I don't buy for one minute the tutorial's justification that the project
> directory structure can be changed without rewriting any Jamfiles. One
> typically doesn't have so many Jamfiles or restructure projects so often
> that fixing these references is a big deal.

Imagine for a minute that the project in question is boost. If there 10 
projects which used Boost, and one day directory organisation change, that 
will be a major hassle. 

- Volodya