Re: [jamboost] BBv1 / BBv2 thoughts/questions/comments

From: Vladimir Prus (ghost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-07-22 09:54:30

Hi Alo,
> I recently started using BB in my medium-sized project. Initially I used
> BBv1, and then few days later as BBv2. I must say I don't regret the
> switch (I was formerly using GNU build tools, and only MSVC proj files
> on win32); the reason behind the switch was to help with project
> scalability - GNU tools were no longer sufficient, but with BB, it's
> much better now.
>
> However, I do have some questions/comments, as first-time BB user
> (probably some are FAQ - I did browse the list, but might'v missed some):
>
> 1. Why was the single bin/ directory replaced with multiple bin/
> directories all over the hierarchy? With BBv1, it was very convenient to
> rm -rf bin/ to get rid of everything, now one has to go through bunch of
> subdirs to find all the bin/ dirs (and no, bjam --clean isn't a solution
> - it still leaves stuff behind, especially when you'r working on the
> build system, adding/removing targets etc).

This question is answered by Motonari Ito already.

> 2. Why does msvc build display the source files separately during build,
> but no other toolset do? I understand it's "standard" for MSVC to show
> that (e.g. when launched from IDE), but shouldn't all toolsets generate
> roughly the same output?

What do you mean? For all toolsets, Boost.Build generates something like:

toolset.compile.c bin/toolset/debug/a.o
toolset.compile.c bin/toolset/debug/b.o
toolset.compile.c bin/toolset/debug/c.o

> 3. What's the status of QT4 support? I saw some posts about it here,
> does anyone have a working version for it?

Nope, sorry, at least not yet.

> 4. Is it worth at all trying to use BB from 1.32 distribution, or should
> I use CVS snapshot? In other words, how fast is BB evolving right now,
> is 8-months old version hopelessly out of date for real-world use?

I think so. CVS snapshot is sufficiently stable and has less bugs that M10.

> 5. Just a note about the manual from someone who just spent 4 days
> learning BB - BBv2 manual IS a lot better than v1 one, but the
> organization is bit rough, it's hard to find specific things in it, so
> you end up clicking through all the pages each time you need a specific
> thing. You can't just hop in there to look up a single thing, you'd have
> to read the entire manual in detail (at least once) to get the features
> overview ...

Can you suggest the organization that would work better for you?

Thanks,
Volodya