Re: [Boost-build] --exec-prefix --builddir and --build-dir

From: Rene Rivera (grafikrobot_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-11-23 09:20:30

David Abrahams wrote:
> If you look at 
> 
>   bjam --v2 --help
> 
> you'll see a mix of option styles.  There's 
> 
>      --exec-prefix
> 
> with two words separated by a hyphen, but there's also
> 
>      --builddir
> 
> and
>      
>      --buildid
> 
> I believe --builddir is especially heinous because, IIUC, the
> official BBv2 option is --build-dir. 

<sracasm> Welcome to the wonderful world of autoconf options. </sarcasm>

The "--exec-prefix" is what autoconf uses. And the "--builddir" follows 
the autoconf style for things like "--bindir", "--datadir", etc:

Fine tuning of the installation directories:
   --bindir=DIR           user executables [EPREFIX/bin]
   --sbindir=DIR          system admin executables [EPREFIX/sbin]
   --libexecdir=DIR       program executables [EPREFIX/libexec]
   --datadir=DIR          read-only architecture-independent data 
[PREFIX/share]
   --sysconfdir=DIR       read-only single-machine data [PREFIX/etc]
   --sharedstatedir=DIR   modifiable architecture-independent data 
[PREFIX/com]
   --localstatedir=DIR    modifiable single-machine data [PREFIX/var]
   --libdir=DIR           object code libraries [EPREFIX/lib]
   --includedir=DIR       C header files [PREFIX/include]
   --oldincludedir=DIR    C header files for non-gcc [/usr/include]
   --infodir=DIR          info documentation [PREFIX/info]
   --mandir=DIR           man documentation [PREFIX/man]

> This is making it hard for me to
> give clear and straightforward getting started instructions. 

Yea, clarity, one of the reasons I hate autoconf.

> Can we
> please settle on one convention?  I prefer (by far) the versions with
> the hyphens.

Sure... But do we want to stray from the insistent users familiar with 
autoconf options?

> If there's some need to keep the un-hyphenated options for backward
> compatibility, can we at least make them undocumented?

The only backward compatibility would be the configure script (not that 
it works as is anyway), and possible user scripts. The former can be 
fixed, the latter is more problematic, but since users would likely need 
to change such scripts to account for the rest of the new BBv2 syntax I 
wouldn't worry too much about it.

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