Re: [Boost-build] [bbv2 test] explicit test-suite ?

From: Eric Niebler (eric_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-10-05 11:27:30

David Abrahams wrote:
> Vladimir Prus <ghost_at_[hidden]> writes:
> 
>> But looking at the invocation of such function, you don't know what
>> it does.  It's just that Boost.Build Jamfile is far away from actual
>> files than make, so pretty much everything is function call.
> 
> To clarify, Volodya means that unlike Makefiles, which are written in
> terms of actual files (low-level targets), Jamfiles are written in
> terms of abstract targets that generate files.

That doesn't really matter to me. Abstract or concrete, I should know 
what the targets and dependencies are by looking at the Jamfile.

> I'm not sure whether that helps, since we still don't syntactically
> distinguish functions that generate targets from those that don't.  It
> would be interesting to think about ways to do that.  Even naming
> conventions might help.  All that said, I am inclined to agree with
> Volodya that this one case isn't enough to indicate a great problem
> that needs to be dealt with.

If once case isn't enough, perhaps another will help. I have a jamfile 
for building some documentation. It has rule invocations like this:

   doxygen blahdoc : [ glob ../../../boost/blah/*.hpp ] ;

   xml blah : blah.qbk ;

Somewhere inside blah.qbk, I have the line:
   [xinclude blahdoc.boostbook]

which causes QuickBook to pull in the doxygen-generated reference 
section. This works, but there's a problem. When I touch one of the 
header files, the doxygen rule fires and rebuilds blahdoc.boostbook, but 
the blah rule, which invokes quickbook, doesn't. Because there isn't a 
dependency between the two rules. And I have no way of knowing how to 
specify the dependency.

If this were make, I'd list the one target as one of the dependencies of 
the other, and everything would just work. That doesn't work here. (I 
know because that's the first thing I tried.) After searching, I 
discovered that Jam has a DEPENDS intrinsic. (Aside: IMO, the fact that 
Jam needs a hack like DEPENDS is indicative of the problem. Dependencies 
should be Jam's bread and butter. There should be syntax for stating 
dependencies, not a magic rule buried in some documentation. My $0.02) 
But I couldn't make it work. If I add "DEPENDS blah : blahdoc ; " to my 
jamfile, blah *still* doesn't get rebuilt when blahdoc does.

It could be that the doxygen rule, or the xml rule, are creating targets 
with names other than those I expect. But I haven't a clue because I 
couldn't find where the doxygen and xml rules were documented.

Or maybe I'm doing something silly and this problem is unrelated. But 
the thing is, without knowing what the targets and dependencies are, I 
have no way to even begin to fathom what the problem here could be. What 
I'm trying to do is *so simple*, and I'm completely at a loss. Help?

-- 
Eric Niebler
Boost Consulting
www.boost-consulting.com