Re: [Boost-build] naive usage of bootstrap.sh

Subject: Re: [Boost-build] naive usage of bootstrap.sh
From: Stefan Seefeld (stefan_at_[hidden])
Date: 2016-10-24 11:31:34

On 24.10.2016 10:56, Vladimir Prus wrote:
>
>
> On 24-Oct-16 5:40 PM, Stefan Seefeld wrote:
>> On 23.10.2016 15:55, Robert Ramey wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>>> Which looks quite wrong to me.  I expect bootstrap.sh to build some
>>> boost tools not include things like --show-libraries , without-icu
>>> etc. I'm now totally confused as to what bootstrap.sh is supposed to
>>> do.
>>
>> I entirely agree. I originally was very confused as it wasn't clear what
>> that script's job was, but eventually I just got used to it and started
>> ignoring it.
>> However, I still think this is wrong, and I entirely agree with Robert
>> that "bootstrap.sh" should do nothing but prepare the build tool itself,
>> so all the build-specific parameters should then be added to the
>> invocation of 'bjam' (or 'b2' or whatever the name of the day is).
>
> The current behaviour is not quite arbitrary either - it was originally
> made to help people who like to pass some values to configure script,
> and make those values stick. It may be easier to skip that and just
> instruct to read project-config.jam and modify to taste, but I'm sure
> others will complain just as loudly :-(

At the very least I think bootstrap.sh should not accept options such as
--with... or --without...
I think it would also help if bootstrap.sh would print out a message
explaining that it generated project-config.jam, in addition to bjam/b2.

>
>
>> Perhaps relatedly: I noticed on my laptop that `bjam` (as installed from
>> system package "boost-build") would ignore the 'BOOST_BUILD_PATH'
>> variable. Perhaps 'bootstrap.sh' causes the bjam / b2 executable to have
>> certain values hard-coded / compiled in, and that such command-line
>> options as '--prefix' will thus affect which values that are ?
>> That ought to be documented, at the very least !
>
> No, bootstrap.sh does not hardcode any values; it only sets up
> project-config.jam. If you system boost-build package does not work,
> it's veyr likely because it's some very old version.
>

`bjam -v` reports "Boost.Jam  Version 2015.07. OS=LINUX.", and was
installed pas part of the boost-jam-1.60.0-7.fc24.x86_64 package, thus
is actually fairly recent. (I had some local modifications to
boost.build that I wanted to try out, but wan't able to point bjam at my
version of Boost.Build; it insisted on using the one it was installed with.)

Thanks,
        Stefan

-- 
      ...ich hab' noch einen Koffer in Berlin...