Re: [Boost-build] Future development

From: Vladimir Prus (ghost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-10-09 02:04:47

On Tuesday 09 October 2007 09:00:38 Ray Lambert wrote:

> >> ...  Hence, I tend to agree with Volodya's proposed solution to replace 
> >> the jam-related parts with a re-write in a modern, popular, and 
> >> well-supported language such as Python.  
> >>     
> > He's not talking about replacing the jam part, FWIW.
> >   
> Isn't he?  Perhaps I misunderstood that then?  I thought this was a main 
> point of the re-write.  Perhaps Volodya can clarify?

We're rewriting Boost.Build, from jam language, to Python. The jam build
engine itself won't be affected. 

The strange story is that while jam is not written to usual software enginerring
practices, it works. As far as build engine is concerned, I believe we "only"
made those big changes:

        - Changed it to scan targets after they are produced, and find
        dependencies on targets yet-to-be-produced
        - Fixed -j

And the only thing on build engine front that might be worth implementing
is using build signatures (MD5 of the command used to create target), and
rebuild target when that changes.

- Volodya