Re: [Boost-build] Son of b2 - suggestions

Subject: Re: [Boost-build] Son of b2 - suggestions
From: Klemens Morgenstern (klemens.morgenstern_at_[hidden])
Date: 2016-10-31 08:05:56

Am 31.10.2016 um 12:41 schrieb Paul A. Bristow:
>
>>> 2  Be very reluctant to require more tools, like Python.  Every extra tool that you add will reduce the number of people who
>> will
>>> use it.  Half of your prospective users have never heard of Python, and barely know of Unix.
>> I don't think so. I think the people you're thinking about are the
>> IDE-Buildsystem users, and if that does it for them, they shouldn't
>> switch. It's more a case of, how portable the tool is. Python has
>> extremely widespread support, so I don't see an issue there. Java or .net would be insanely bad choices.
> I fear you live in a small *nixy bubble ;-)
>
> And also you know far too much already.  I have the big advantage of being simple and senile.
>
> Most of your users are IDE users, even if they mostly hide behind the build-system.  They need to be able to understand what the
> build system is doing under the hood when things don't do what they expect or want.
>
> I believe that bjam/b2 is a superior and powerful build system that failed to grab market share mainly because the people who built
> and documented it were too clever and knew too much.  I'm just pleading not to make the same mistake a second time.
>
> & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost-build
I mostly use eclipse with b2. But I guess that constitutes a bubble. 
However: the user I think about is not the one being happy with visual 
studio, who is confused when he has to build boost (because he doesn't 
have to anymore: 
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2016/09/19/vcpkg-a-tool-to-acquire-and-build-c-open-source-libraries-on-windows/), 
but the people being either unhappy CMake users, those who still use 
Makefiles or even worse: custom build scripts.
I know both, and to those are the people who are helped the most by a 
new build-system. If someone is happy with VS - good for him, and for 
someone just wanting to code C++ in a rather trivial environment it's 
probably the sane solution. Those are the people who don't know the 
difference between linking and compiling, and I don't have a problem 
with that, but they don't need a build-system.

Imho b2 failed because the documentation is not nearly detailed enough, 
the language is strange and building extensions is painful. Not as 
painful as using CMake, that's why I'm doing it, but it still feels like 
masochism. The real limit of b2 is constituted by it still using jam, 
and all other (except for the documentation) come from that.

But I guess working on boost.process has destroyed my judgement of what 
people should know about processes forever :).