Re: [Boost-build] Target paths idea

From: Rush Manbert (rush_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-12-03 12:57:50

Rene Rivera wrote:
> Vladimir Prus wrote:
> 
>>It's worth to generalize this, and allow a project to specify custom
>>function used to compute target paths. The question, then, is what
>>do to if the rule is changed by the user in a way that path XXX
>>is possible with previous version of the rule and with new version of
>>the rule, but with different properties.
>>
>>Maybe I should actually implement MD5 build signatures.
> 
> 
> Maybe people should read the various suggestions I posted about shorter 
> paths over the past few *years* ;-) The last one of which is about user 
> designated feature paths 
> <http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.build/14852>. It could 
> certainly be extended to specify a user rule (with the @rule syntax) to, 
> for example, calculate a hash.
> 
>
Not really a reply to Rene, just appending to the latest post on the thread.

 From a user's perspective, I would much prefer a clearly defined set of 
abbreviations used to create paths over a MD5 hash. I think it's good to 
be able to look at a path and figure out what it represents, even if I 
need to parse the abbreviations carefully. I have found from my own 
projects that you can be very aggressive with abbreviations and still 
get useful names that people can understand. A hash loses all such meaning.

Just my 2 cents.

- Rush