Re: [Boost-build] Call of interest

Subject: Re: [Boost-build] Call of interest
From: Konstantin Litvinenko (to.darkangel_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-05-27 02:56:36

Vladimir Prus пишет:
>> clean and precise error messages from build system.
> 
> Can you show example error messages from your system?
> 
  :) I expect that question. By design I want to do the follow: 1) Parse 
to tokens 2) Build AST 3) build backend representation. Because I 
concentrate on backend, frontend print error messages as bad as BBv2 do 
:), may be even worser :(. But this is due I have no time to do all 
these stages in a right way. Having clean frontend/backend separation 
and custom parser make it possible to lift up error message quality to 
what every program language have. I decide to go away from using Python, 
Lua  or any other script languages only for one simple reason - I want 
to features, targets and others primary build concepts and players to be 
first class citizen in a language. Having this and clean and easy AST 
allow building precise IDE support for Hammer scripts. Make it possible 
to build tools for precise rewriting, formating, analyzing Hammer's 
scripts and whole build tree. Custom language with own parser will give 
much more possibilities to enhance/extend such a tool. Yes, thats 
require more manpower and knowledge to be done, but in a long time 
perspective IMO its right investment.

>> * Hammer can generate Visual Studio 2005 projects and solution files.
>> There is no limits in IDE projects generation, just no one write nothing
>> else :);
> 
> So, is your system generating build description for other underlying tools?
>>From the description above I gather that "no", but then I am not sure
> what generated IDE projects contain/do.
> 

    Hammer is build system by self. Project generation is only one of it 
ability. I develop mostly in Visual Studio with help of syntax 
highlighting, code navigation and others features that makes my life 
much easy. Being build system by self Hammer respect other users and 
give them ability to work in they usual environment. In that sens it 
like CMake - write one script and generate others if you need. But 
Hammer doesn't support autotool/autoconf headers/libraries discovering. 
For now I have strong opinion that software can be written in a way that 
doesn't require all these checks. Build system should help write such a 
software, but this help should be as little as possible. May be I am 
wrong, but now that my position.

> 
> Do you have a custom build engine (the thing that decides what has to
> be rebuilt, and what not).

Yes

  Is that engine capable of rescanning
> header dependencies in a file that is itself generated during build process?

This one I don't have :( But thinking about a problem.

> Does it have unit tests? 

Yes, it does. The quality is not perfect, but it does. The main problem 
that I don't like huge number of cpp files - one test in one file. I 
packet all tests in one set. But IDE doesn't have a way to run easy only 
one Boost.Test when I need to debug. I think I should do something with 
it....
You can browse test at
http://apps.sourceforge.net/trac/buildhammer/browser/hammer/core/trunc/test

Can it be easily modified to support signatures
> (both for file content and for the updating commands)?

This one I can't understand :(
May be asking about that.... Hammer output for dll/so/lib is tagged by 
MD5 calculated from target sources and build request. This is unique 
identify different builds and prevent from dll hell. Yes, looking on

boost.program_options-1.36.0-1e83e9bc7c03898215686e15b2b3efdd.lib

can scary anybody, but this the only way I have found to resolve all 
build problems forever. By looking on that file name you can't tell what 
compiler was used, is it linked with shared runtime or static and so on. 
  But you don't need to known that in %99.99 of cases. But when you 
really need it one can write a tool that print all information about the 
way a library was build. This is subject to discuss, but I spend a lot 
of time in thinking about that problem and I think that is the solution.