Re: [Boost-build] Jamfile feature request - bjam version check

Subject: Re: [Boost-build] Jamfile feature request - bjam version check
From: Vladimir Prus (vladimir_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-12-07 08:31:59

Beman Dawes wrote:

>> - What are the first 10 lines in Boost.Boost output
> 
> What is "Boost.Boost output"? 

That's "Boost.Build output". However, since you report that the warning
message is indeed produced for you, this question is no longer relevant.

>>> This isn't the first time that I've had problems because a certain
>>> version of bjam was required for some build to work. Perhaps Jamfiles
>>> could have a feature that says, in effect, "version n.nn or later of
>>> bjam is required, but the current version is earlier than that."
>>>
>>> If this  condition isn't met, the build should terminate with a clear
>>> error indication.
>> 
>> You might want to check
>> 
>>         http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.testing/6110
> 
> Yes, but the I'm running chron scripts. 

The regression tests are run in cron scripts, as well. And also note
that due to xsltproc messed up you'll have to grep the output for messages,
anyway. (I've posted a message about this to boost-docs, but it's caught
in moderation for several days already).

> There is no human reader to see 
> that message. That warning needs to turn into a hard error that aborts
> the run. If that isn't appropriate as the default behavior, perhaps an
> --non-interactive switch could turn it on. svn, for example, uses that
> approach.

Can you suggest a policy what should become hard error? The problem here
is that if you're running unattended doc build under cygwin using cygwin
line endings, then everything works just fine. It's tricky to detect
line endings of a file, and it's surely wrong to emit hard error for
something that does not affect anything.

Was non-zero status reported by bjam in your test run? If not, I presume
that's the right thing to fix, by making the action setting XML_CATALOG_FILE
reported as failed and making other (boostbook) actions report failure if
sources are missing. What do you think?

- Volodya