Re: [Boost-build] Boost.BuildV2 Python migration, SCons?

Subject: Re: [Boost-build] Boost.BuildV2 Python migration, SCons?
From: Vladimir Prus (ghost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-08-29 09:06:16

On Saturday 29 August 2009 Bruce Simpson wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> Interesting that Python has been proposed as an alternative to the 
> internal bjam language:
>     http://zigzag.cs.msu.su/boost.build/wiki/PythonPort
> 
> I found the Boost.BuildV2/bjam native language difficult to fathom. Some 
> time ago I successfully implemented it, experimentally, as a build 
> system for XORP, however, we have since moved to using SCons, which is 
> working well for us at the moment. Some of the constructs in there, I 
> borrowed from our bjam experiment.
> 
> I wonder if there has been any thought or discussion about possibly 
> moving to SCons (which uses Python), for building Boost itself?

It's hard to give an accurate and useful answer to this question. "There were"
is accurate, but probably not what you wanted to know. I think there's even
a branch where scons is used to build Boost, but I don't know the state
of it.

I am personally not convinced that SCons has the same high-level features
Boost.Build has. As for using SCons as build engine -- this is possible,
in future, although there were some concerns about its performance.

- Volodya