[Boost-build] How to write Jam Variables/Flags to (XML)File?

From: Henry Roeland (henry.roeland_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-03-26 10:10:59

I'm sort of a newbie to Jam and I'm trying to write a rule that generates  
a Jamfile into an XML file. This all in order to let this XML be  
transformed to e.g. MS Visual Studio Project file.

I'm experiencing problems when trying this:

e.g.actions PrintCFLAGSToFile
{
    printf "$(2)" "$(CFLAGS)" >> $(<)
}

results in jam parsing args to printf like:
    printf "%s"  "-Zi" "-DMSDOS" "-D_WINDOWS" "-D_TM_WIN" "-D_TMDEF_UINT"  
"-D_huge=" "-D_X86_" "-DWIN32" "-EHsc" "-GR" "-W3" "-Gy" "-Fd" "-LD" "-MD"  
"-wd" "4996"  >> test.xml

And this is not really working.

Is there any action that writes JAM variables/flags literally to disk?

Notes: It should work on WinXP. Above action is using printf from Cygwin.

Why?
Our current build system, which is based on Imake/make/nmake, has some  
scripts to generate MS Visual Studio 6 project files. I want to be sure  
that, if I propose Jam as the new build tool to use, it is also possible  
to have this functionality of generating MS Visual Studio project files  
 from the build system.

Hopefully somebody can offer me some help.

Thanks,

Henry