Projects and attributes

From: David Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-12-29 15:02:40

The introduction of a special named parameter interface for declaring
projects and the introduction of an "attribute" concept seem to me to be
entirely gratuitous, since the things one has to declare for a project
have so much in common with the "common syntax" for declaring main targets

Projects Main targets
======== ============
project id (name) name
requirements requirements
source location
build directory
default-build default-build
usage requirements

If you just represent source location and build directory as features
that can be given values in the project's requirements or default-build,
you have now unified the two declaration syntaxes.

Regularity is good; it makes the system easy to understand and explain.

[Furthermore, it seems to me as though usage requirements might make
sense for projects (since projects can be "used").]

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
http://www.boost-consulting.com