Re: [Boost-build] The future of B2?

Subject: Re: [Boost-build] The future of B2?
From: Rene Rivera (grafikrobot_at_[hidden])
Date: 2016-10-03 19:27:52

On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 3:19 AM, Dominique Devienne <ddevienne_at_[hidden]>
wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 10:19 PM, <aaron_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
>> > I want to be able to launch my IDE of choice and be able to
>> > build, debug, analyze, deploy, etc with b2 as my build system.
>> > And to do that without the need to look at a command line.
>>
>> This is probably the biggest feature request from all of our
>> 400+ developers.
>>
> "IDE [...] build [...] with b2".
>
> It's not clear to me whether Rene's and your point is about using b2
> *within* the IDE,
> or using b2 to generate a b2-independent IDE-specific project/config. Or a
> mix, like CMake.
>
> With Visual Studio as an example, does that create a "Makefile
> project"-like config such
> that F7 uses b2 instead instead of the "native" VS/MSBuild? What actually
> matters to me
> is CTRL-F7 to compile a single TU w/o having to build or link the
> project/everything,
> and if I recall correctly, Makefile projects don't allow that. --DD
>

What matters to me is that a user be able to install b2 support for their
IDE and be able to interact with the IDE in then normal way to build their
projects. The specifics will vary depending on how extensible the
particular IDE is though. For example CLion is likely, I say likely because
their build system support is still in its infancy, to support very tight
integration. But for something like VS it might be less tight. And VS might
require that we support reading/importing the VS project XML files. But
most will likely require presenting a custom UI to configure the b2
integration. But to answer your top question..

I think that b2 needs to build *within* the IDE, with varied levels of
within. And not generate project files. As that's a flawed design that
leads to countless problems and limitations.

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