Re: [jamboost] Why do no targets depend on the Jamfiles?

From: Zbynek Winkler (zw-bjam_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-04-05 08:43:19

Vladimir Prus wrote:

>On Monday 04 April 2005 22:43, Shawn Halpenny wrote:
> 
>
>>I'm just starting to explore Boost.Build for a project and discovered
>>that no targets seem to depend on the Jamfiles themselves (neither
>>those of my projects nor those of Boost.Build).
>> 
>>
>
>Right. It was requested once, IIRC, but overall there was little demand.
> 
>
I believe it was me. And I still consider it to be a major problem but I 
was alone and I did not manage to convice anybody about it seriousness. 
See my comment at http://www.scons.org/cgi-bin/wiki/SconsVsOtherBuildTools

> Another problem is that the built files depend only on the source 
> files and not on the command to build them (like in scons). That means 
> that when you alter your Jamfile you either have to find and delete 
> the executable by yourself or rebuild the whole target. That is 
> another problem since it does not rebuild only the target you specify 
> but also all depending libraries (aka rebuilding the world) without 
> the option not to.

> [snip]
>
>However, it's a question if it should be enabled by default, or via some 
>explicit options. I'm sure some of your users will disagree to have 
>everything rebuilt on every Jamfile change. 
> 
>
Well, I agree that it is not a good idea to rebuild everything on every 
Jamfile change. IMHO the built files should depend on the commands used 
to build them...

Zbynek

-- 
http://zw.matfyz.cz/ http://robotika.cz/
Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic