[Boost-users] Complaint about Current Boost Build System

From: Wu Yinghui, Freddie (yhwu_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-11-23 22:33:04

Hi all,

Sorry for this e-mail, since it is more of a complaint. But I do feel 
the urge to raise this problem to the community so that some solution 
could be derived soon.

The current build system (1.33/34 from CVS) creates subdirectories for 
each variant/ subvariant specified in the BUILD environment. When more 
user customizations are specified, the consequence of this is very deep 
directory structures.

Nonetheless, some OSes imposes stringent limits on how long a path can 
go (e.g., Win2k/XP limits a path name to be 259 characters long 
maximum). There causes big problem with the building system when error 
can occur from nowhere in Boost source code itself. This constraint 
effectively limits how much customization a user can make (e.g., I had 
to remove some additional optimization/ tuning parameters for 
subvariants, and SUBST'ed the Boost directory in order to reduce the 
path name length).

So my question is, why can we not be smarter in this to derive 
alternatives to make the directory structure shallower (or, simply 
reduce the length of the names of each subvariant directory)?

Sorry again if this sound too demanding, but I do consider it an 
important usability limitation of the current Boost build system.

Cheers,

Freddie

-- 
Wu Yinghui, Freddie
Research & Development
Software Engineer
Volume Interactions Pte Ltd
1 Kim Seng Promenade, #12-01
Great World City East Tower
Singapore 237994
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Email: yhwu_at_[hidden]
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