[Boost-users] Boost Build, custom-built targets

From: John Meinel (boost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-08-25 12:31:19

Hello all-

I'm currently using Boost Build v1 for some of my projects. I must say, 
it's significantly better than Makefiles. Overall, I'm quite pleased, 
though it took a little while to learn.

I haven't been able to figure out one thing, though. How to generate 
custom built targets. Basically, I want to auto-generate a C++ source 
file so that I can keep track of version information.

I have a python script that determines the version information from 
various sources (such as the revision control system [arch]), and I 
would like it to be run before my library is built.

If I was using a makefile I would do something like this:

.PHONY: version.cpp

version.cpp: generate_version.py version
        ./generate_version.py

This would cause version.cpp to be generated fresh each time the build 
process was called. However, I don't really need the ".PHONY", it would 
be okay if it was only created whenever one of the other files changed.

I'm sure it's possible to do this with bjam, I just haven't figured out 
how to do customized stuff like this yet.

Thanks,
John
=:->

PS> Is there a better mailing list for this?