Re: [BBv2] A new MS Platform SDK/StdLib selection method

From: Reece Dunn (msclrhd_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-09-14 14:44:46

Alexey Pakhunov wrote:
> Andrey Melnikov wrote:
> 
>>What is "an SDK"? Is it more than just a library/collection of 
>>libraries? 
> 
> It is a collection of related headers, libraries, binaries. Minimal SDK 
> may contain only headers, for example - WTL. This can be an issue.

How can this be an issue? In general, on Windows, an "SDK" has the 
following layout:

<sdk-root>
include -- header files
amd64 -- AMD64 headers
src -- source code
lib -- libraries
i386 -- IA32 libraries
amd64 -- AMD64 libraries
bin -- binaries (executables and shared libraries)

I am not sure how strictly this structure holds for other "SDK"s. I am 
thinking of things like python. Also, do "SDK"s follow a different 
convention on *nix?

You could assume the above layout and have controls for locating the 
include, lib and bin directories for "SDK"'s that don't follow that 
pattern. So:

using wtl : 7.0 : c:/sdks/wtl70 ;

would add c:/sdks/wtl70/bin to the path (not a problem if the directory 
does not exist), c:/sdks/wtl70/include to the include path either via 
environment variables (for msvc) or <include>/<system-include> for other 
compilers...

Hmm... are there <system-include> and <system-library> features? If 
there were, we could then add them to the environment for msvc and do 
the right thing with other compilers (doesn't CodeWarrior have a system 
include option?) That way, STLPort/another STL implementation could do:

<system-include>c:/sdks/stlport/4.5/include
<system-library>c:/sdks/stlport/4.5/lib

One issue is what to do if you have something like:

using python : 2.2 : c:/python22 ;
using python : 2.3 : c:/python22 ;

if python was made both a tool and an SDK (as defined above), which 
version of python.exe would be used? Obviously, the solution would be to 
specify the path explicitly (as is done with python.jam), but this might 
cause issues elsewhere if two DLLs with the same name are in the path.

- Reece
Software Engineer/Sophos
www.sophos.com