Re: [Boost-build] gcc 3.3.6 and -Winvalid-pch

Subject: Re: [Boost-build] gcc 3.3.6 and -Winvalid-pch
From: Rene Rivera (grafikrobot_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-05-02 22:17:29

On 5/2/2010 2:59 PM, Wesley Johnson wrote:
> I would think that Boost/Jam would be detecting the compiler version and
> reacting appropriately.  Is that not exactly why something this complicated
> was invented.
>
> Is there an error in Boost/Jam compile applying  -Winvalid-pch   to a gcc
> 3.3.6 compiler. ???
> I would think that Jam would detect gcc 3.3.6 and not apply a switch that is
> known to not work.
>
> If it is an error by Boost, how do I go about coping with it ???
> Where do I fix errors like this ???
>
> Is the end user expected to find switches like pch=off  and apply them
> according to their platform and compiler.  I thought that is what Jam
> was supposed to do.

Ah.. I can understand being a bit perplexed.. But in everything that is 
complicated there are bugs. So yes, it's a bug if we use an option that 
is not available in the version of the toolset.

> There might be other switches like pch that I need to use.  Where are they
> documented ???

Unfortunately there can be an unbounded set of options since each 
toolset is different and hence a good portion of them are not documented 
except in the source file for each toolset. For example I added a new 
one just for the daarwin/xcode toolset a few days ago. But a good 
portion of them are documented in the BB docs in 
<http://www.boost.org/doc/tools/build/doc/html/bbv2/overview/builtins/features.html>. 
Unfortunately "pch" is not among the ones in that documentation :-( And 
hence it's also a bug it's not documented.

> I do know the age of this compiler, etc., etc..  This machine is used for
> research and there are reasons why it is not
> updated to every new release.
> Unless the C++ language has changed significantly this compiler should still
> be able to
> count the number of initializers in an array.
> Is there a new C++ language standard to which Boost is written.  ???

That is strictly a question for the dev or user list. But briefly, Boost 
is written to what the compiler vendors support through the support of 
testers and maintainers that provide expertise for specific versions of 
those tools. Hence, we can only support compilers that are tested.

> I am not sure what I should do at this point except start writing Makefiles,
> and start rewriting the failing libraries.
>
> Thank You for any help.

One thing we tend to always ask when posting to the build list is that 
people provide the output of running: bjam --debug-configuration (rest 
of the args).. So that we can tell what BB thinks you are configuring. 
If you could post that, and related version information, we could try to 
diagnose what problems you may be having.

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