Re: [Boost-build] Please review my current prototype of porting from make to BB

From: Phillip Seaver (phil_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-02-02 12:15:12

Daniel Einspanjer wrote:
> I have a presentation to my engineering team tomorrow where-in I hope to 
> demonstrate to them some of the advantages of moving away from makefiles to 
> BB.  The other alternative on the table is ant + cpptasks.
>   
Hopefully, by "tomorrow" you mean Friday.

I don't know about the best way to do it, since I'm not an expert.  I'll
give my opinion, though.  :-)

You could shorten your Jamfile a good bit by doing things like:

local NTDEFINES = _WIN _USE_32BIT_TIME_T WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN _WIN32 WIN32 _WIN _WIN32_WINNT=0x0500

..and replace the long list with "<os>NT:<define>$(NTDEFINES)" 
http://public.perforce.com/public/jam/src/Jam.html#varexp

The defines that depend on build parameters can be done with a feature. 
To borrow from the "variant" feature:

feature demobuild : : implicit composite propagated symmetric ;
feature.compose <demobuild>internal : <define>_AN_INTERNAL_BUILD ;
feature.compose <demobuild>acme : <define>CUSTOMER=Acme ;

Then, you can do "bjam demobuild=internal" or even "bjam internal" (due
to the "implicit" above) to do the builds with _AN_INTERNAL_BUILD
defined.  A potential downside to that is that everything will be built
separately just like debug and release builds.  I haven't quite figured
out yet how to apply a feature like this to selected projects and how to
selectively propagate it to projects that are used by it.

As for things like "<variant>debug:<define>DEBUG", I have them in my
Jamroot as well.  I have _DEBUG defined for debug builds and NDEBUG
defined for release builds.  It seems like a good place to put them to
me.  I also have "build-dir ../bbuild" on the project in Jamroot so that
everything gets built outside of the source tree.

I think the "<os>NT:<cflags>/wd####" lines are specific to Visual C++ . 
So, I believe you want "<toolset>msvc:<cflags>...."

Good luck!  I hope this helps.

Phillip Seaver