Re: [Boost-cmake] Boost CMake at BoostCon?

Subject: Re: [Boost-cmake] Boost CMake at BoostCon?
From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-01-11 12:12:38

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 11:45 AM, troy d. straszheim
<troy_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> Beman Dawes wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 11:27 PM, David Abrahams <dave_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>>>
>>> on Fri Jan 09 2009, "Beman Dawes" <bdawes-AT-acm.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Is anyone planning to submit a BoostCon proposal for a talk, tutorial,
>>>> or workshop on Boost CMake?
>>>>
>>>> Seems like this would be a natural to build momentum.
>>>
>>> I've been considering that.
>
> My orbit is coming back around...  I've been planning to submit a talk
> on the state of boost-cmake.   Just booked my hotel room.

Wonderful!

> Should I proceed or does somebody else want to take this one?

You and possibly Michael Jackson would be naturals. Dave is always a
great presenter, but there are other topics that could benefit from
his insights.

>
>> Great!
>>
>> Here are some off the top of my head thoughts, intended to stimulate
>> discussion:
>>
>> It seems to me that there are several different Boost CMake tasks
>> someone might want to accomplish, and documentation and/or training
>> needs to be oriented toward those tasks. The tasks might be broken
>> down like this:
>>
>> 1)  Build one or more libraries, possibly with variants.
>>
>> 2)  Test one or more libraries locally.
>>
>> 3)  Set up simple build and test configurations for a library that
>> does not require any deep understanding of Boost CMake.
>>
>> 4)  Learn enough about Boost CMake to be able to set up complex
>> configurations, or set up configurations that do not follow the
>> standard patterns. Be able to support other users and help maintain
>> Boost CMake.
>>
>> Docs for tasks 1-3 should contain only material relevant to the task
>> at hand. IOW, be very task oriented.
>>
>> For BoostCon, it would be great if there was one session that covered
>> a bit of an overview and then how to accomplish tasks 1 and 2, and
>> then another session (or sessions) were devoted to 3 and 4. The 1-2
>> session would be a prerequisite for the 3-4 session, at least for
>> those with no prior exposure to CMake.
>
> Sounds reasonable to me.   It isn't clear to me that this would take
> two sessions, you could probably do it all in 60-90 minutes, maybe
> before lunch: do the task-oriented part first, then announce
> that those who aren't interested in gory details can split.

While I'm sure you *could* do a decent presentation in 60-90 minutes,
I'd like to suggest thinking in terms of actually getting participants
up-to-speed and running stuff on their laptops. That will take more
time than you just showing a bunch of powerpoint slides, but I think
people will get much more out of a more interactive session.

> I suppose we should plan for some birds-of-a-feather type sessions as
> well.

Yes. Also see the reply I'm about to write to Bill Hoffman's query.

--Beman