Re: [Boost-users] Getting started with Boost: what did you need to know?

From: Deane Yang (deane_yang_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-02-07 17:45:13

Paul Floyd wrote:
> Deane Yang wrote:
> 
>> Definitely. It's so much easier and more reliable to use than any 
>> alternative I know of, especially if you want to compile and link the 
>> same code on different platforms. I now use an IDE only for debugging.
> 
> Hi
> 
> Out of interest, what are the alternatives that you know of? Any feel 
> for performance?

The only ones I have direct experience with are the different variants 
of make (but mostly GNU make) and IDE's. I looked at but never used 
scons, which feels much less alien than bjam.

Perhaps it is important to distinguish between bjam and Boost.Build. 
bjam by itself is, as far as I can tell, a much-harder-to-understand 
replacement for make and therefore by itself quite unattractive to me.

However, Boost.Build v2 is to bjam what the standard and boost libraries 
are to C++. It contains all sorts of knowledge about OS's, compilers, 
linkers, as well as frameworks for adding new functionality. It allows 
you to write fairly simple Jamfiles that do standard things on different 
platforms, without having to worry about the specific syntax required 
for each platform or compiler or linker. At the same time, it allows you 
to insert platform-specific options when you do need to.

I've never seen the equivalent of Boost Build v2 for other build tools, 
but I'm certainly not particularly knowledgeable about these things.

Deane