Re: [Boost-build] modular builds

Subject: Re: [Boost-build] modular builds
From: Rene Rivera (grafikrobot_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-05-04 12:17:09

On Mon, May 4, 2015 at 10:50 AM, Stefan Seefeld <stefan_at_[hidden]> wrote:

>
> Indeed. Is there a better way to approach this ? If boost.python (as
> well as most other libraries, I'd assume) depend (at least implicitly)
> on boostcpp.jam, shouldn't that dependency be made explicit by having
> another module / component "own" it, such that boost.python can then
> depend on it ?
>
> It seems to me that for the last couple of years people have been
> arguing about modularizing boost with a very narrow focus on things like
> header dependencies and source tree layouts, when there are many other
> issues to be resolved.
> How useful is it to hold individual boost libraries in distinct git
> repositories, if I still need to check out the entire boost repo
> including its submodules, to be able to build an individual library ?
>

Because of some external needs I started on a method to build Boost
libraries without needing to do that full checkout. But obviously you would
need to git clone the individual repos of all the dependencies. They BB
support for this is in <
https://github.com/boostorg/build/blob/develop/src/contrib/modular.jam>.
Using it looks something like this:

=== Jamroot.jam
import modular ;
# Adds location to search for /boost/* lib references..
modular.add-location libs/boost /boost ;
# Adds external (to lib build files) dependency references..
modular.external /boost/config : /boost/predef//library ;
===
=== Jamfile.jam
import modular ;
exe my_program :  [ glob ../src/*.cpp ] /boost/config//library
  /boost/system//boost_system ;
===

All that it expects (or at least the goal is this) is that you have the
needed libs in the search path as specified in the modular.add-location
calls. Everything else should be handled. This doesn't currently doesn't
handle the Boost tagging names stuff. As my use case only needed direct BB
building.

Does this look like a better direction?

-- 
-- Rene Rivera
-- Grafik - Don't Assume Anything
-- Robot Dreams - http://robot-dreams.net
-- rrivera/acm.org (msn) - grafikrobot/aim,yahoo,skype,efnet,gmail