Re: [Boost-build] Future development

From: Rene Rivera (grafikrobot_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-10-06 02:11:11

Douglas Gregor wrote:
> On Oct 5, 2007, at 12:58 PM, Daniel Wallin wrote:
> 
>> Douglas Gregor wrote:
>>> some things that BBv2 can't do (my favorite: graphical installers),
>> Can it create graphical installers that are actually useful to us? For
>> example, can the installer download the binaries one by one rather  
>> than
>> including all of them in the exe?
> 
> I don't recall seeing this feature, but I don't know for certain.
> 
>> If not, there's very little that indicate this would be any easier  
>> to do
>> with CMake than with BBv2. It's not like it's impossible, or even very
>> hard, to output and build NSIS code.
> 
> Well, except that CMake builds installers for many kinds of platforms  
> already. The incremental cost of adding the feature you mention to  
> CMake/CPack (assuming it isn't there) is far less than the cost of  
> extending BBv2 with support for NSIS, Mac OS X packages, RPMs, Debian  
> packages, etc.

I thought we where talking about Cmake? Is Cpack the installer add-on? 
Like Ctest is the testing add-on? So we aren't talking about Boost 
adopting Cmake, but adopting Cmake+Ctest+Cpack. That's three tools now. 
Am I confused? Will Boost developers be confused also? Will Boost users 
be confused?

Is the installer generator taking a separate abstract install 
description, or is it using the Cmake descriptions and deciding what to 
install from that? If the latter, I see no way one would ever use it as 
the install process is never the same as the build process.

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