Re: [Boost-build] Broken? lib bar : : <file>...

From: Vladimir Prus (ghost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-02-13 04:43:54

On Sunday 12 February 2006 17:11, David Abrahams wrote:
> Mark Evans <evans_mark_at_[hidden]> writes:
> > And, what will Boost.Build do with such file? If it has no idea what's
> > the type of the file, it has no idea if it can be linked into an
> > executable.
>
> It could take the user's word for it.  Maybe you need a new target
> type "unknown object file."

And we'd need some rules what can and cannot be done with such targets. At the 
moment, all generators complain on targets with unknown type.

> > Well, I can change generators code so that targets with unknown type are
> > silently consumed and passed on to the tool (like linker), but that seems
> > very fragile.
>
> In this case the user is asserting that the file is not only an object
> file, but a library file (either static or dynamic, unspecified).  I
> don't think it would be too fragile to treat those specially.

The only problem is that msvc.link, for example, will only handle targets of 
type STATIC_LIB and IMPORT_LIB, but not just LIB. So, we need to treat

   lib a : : <file>whatever.unkown-suffix ;

as STATIC_LIB.

- Volodya