Adding a new compiler and linker for use with BJAM.

From: Peter Foley (pjfoley_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-06-26 07:48:04

Hi all,

I am not sure if this is a question (Ie easy for a newbie to Bjam to do) or
a feature request (since I may not have the skills to do it myself).

On the boost dev list I said I would look at developing an installer (for
the MS Windows Platform) for boost and would probably look at using WIX
(since I was interested in learning how to use it). I have been making
progress with it and up until now been generating the MSI files by hand (ie
entering in the commands from the command line).

Since it is starting to include a number of wxs files (think CPP files) I
decided to look into writing a jamfile to contain the various build rules to
generate the MSI file. Also as the standard build system of choice for
boost it would hopefully allow other interested parties to look at and
extend/contribute to the installer.

I have read through the online "Boost Build System V2" documentation and the
closest thing I can find to adding new file extensions is "Chapter 22.
Extender Manual". Is this the right part of the manual to look at?

The main tools that would be used are:

* Candle.exe - Which is the compiler for WIX. It takes .wxs files and
compiles them into .wixobj.
* Light.exe - Which is the linker for WIX. It takes all the .wixobj
files and links them into an MSI file.

To give you an example of how these tools are used check out these blog
links: http://blogs.msdn.com/robmen/archive/2004/04/05/107709.aspx (example
using 1 wxs file) and
http://blogs.msdn.com/robmen/archive/2004/05/11/129613.aspx (example using 2
wxs files).

Is it a trivial process to introduce the ability to support WIX within BJAM?

Thanks,

Peter.

PS. Not sure if it will help but while going through the WIX newsgroups I
noticed a link to a SCONs wiki where they have introduced support for WIX.
I am not sure if this would help with building similar functionality within
Bjam. The link is: http://www.scons.org/cgi-bin/wiki/WiX_Tool