[Boost-build] prerequisite builds

From: Ray Lambert (codemonkey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-08-08 15:09:38

Hi,

Does anyone know of a rule or technique that allows one to force another
project to build as a prerequisite to (and independent of) the current
project?

Basically what I need is something like build-project but which will
force the named project to be built *before* the project in the current
Jamfile (and independent of it).

The particular use case here is that I need to build some tools and
generate some files that my main project depends on.  BB dependencies
don't suffice because the generated files might need to be updated due
to external conditions.  I have tools that provide this logic but I need
to build those tools and then invoke them (from the main project's
Jamfile) before the dependency graph is built for the main project.

I've had some success in the past using SHELL, which appears to execute
the named command immediately when the SHELL rule is parsed.  However,
this relied on a shell script which I need to eliminate (and shell
scripts don't need to be built).  I've tried invoking an external copy
of bjam using SHELL and it seemed to work in isolation (despite not
being able to sense build failure or to participate in --clean) but, now
that I've integrated it with the main build, I'm finding that it causes
an endless string of recursive invocations of bjam, which I can only
stop by logging out (on windows).

I've had a real frustrating time getting this to work and I hope that
someone can point me in the right direction.

Thanks,

~ray