Re: [Boost-build] [future] Implementation language(s)..

Subject: Re: [Boost-build] [future] Implementation language(s)..
From: Vladimir Prus (vladimir.prus_at_[hidden])
Date: 2016-10-18 12:35:51

Rene,

thanks for the write up. I have two brief points to make, might have 
more later.

On 18-Oct-16 4:59 PM, Rene Rivera wrote:

> of logic at the project declaration layer; Too big to embed (needs
> external install and linking); Heavyweight run-time, and hence slower
> startups.

I am not sure I agree. Python is not tiny, but you can link with the
interpreter and provide a useful subset of the standard library as
a zip file, it worked quite satisfactory when we needed to bundle GDB
with Python support. Also, startup time for Python itself has been
negligible for me for years.

Relatedly, I think what we have now is an important factor. It is not
like we have dozens of people willing to contribute. Python port was
initially contributed out of the blue by Pedro Ferreira in 2005. Later,
I had a one-month sabbatical to push it further, which was enough to
known down many test failures, but not much more. Now, Aaron has been
working on it. That's not many of people :-)

So it would seem to me that it's most reasonable to work on what we 
have, and it seems like Python port does not have any fundamental
limitations, rather than consider completely different alternative.

It might be great to improve the build engine too, and doing so in C++
will be better than in C, but it seems to me that core build logic 
better be in Python.

Thanks,

-- 
Vladimir Prus
https://vladimirprus.com