[Boost-build] bjam error: Empty path passed to 'make-UNIX'

Subject: [Boost-build] bjam error: Empty path passed to 'make-UNIX'
From: Thomas Bretgeld (thomas.bretgeld_at_[hidden])
Date: 2014-01-15 09:17:46

Hi everybody,

when upgrading to boost 1.55 I encountered the above mentioned problem and my workspace that was compiling fine with an old version of bjam didn't 
compile anymore. I once had built a Jamfile that would search for include and source files inside a project and then compile and link the executable 
so that I don't have to add all the files manually. It now fails with the following error:

/usr/share/boost-build/util/path.jam:511: in path.make from module path
error: Empty path passed to 'make-UNIX'
/usr/share/boost-build/build/property.jam:590: in property.translate-paths from module property
/usr/share/boost-build/build/project.jam:714: in class_at_project-attributes.set from module object(project-attributes)@112
/usr/share/boost-build/build/project.jam:1054: in project from module project-rules
Jamfile:10: in modules.load from module Jamfile</home/gvp/bjam_test/Fail>
/usr/share/boost-build/build/project.jam:311: in load-jamfile from module project
/usr/share/boost-build/build/project.jam:64: in load from module project
/usr/share/boost-build/build/project.jam:145: in project.find from module project
/usr/share/boost-build/build-system.jam:535: in load from module build-system
/usr/share/boost-build/kernel/modules.jam:289: in import from module modules
/usr/share/boost-build/kernel/bootstrap.jam:139: in boost-build from module
/usr/share/boost-build/boost-build.jam:8: in module scope from module

Today I have invested some time to track it down. I was able to create a very simple workspace with 2 projects "Good" and "Fail" to demonstrate the 
problem. The problem seems to be that it fails as soon as there is a header file in the projects' root directory. If there is no header or if the 
header is moved to a subdirectory the compilation works fine.

I hope that there are some smart people out here that can fix this error. It may just be something simple, but my understanding of the bjam internals 
are not good enough to figure it out.

Best regards,
Thomas