[Boost-users] Problems of cross compiling: ar and ranlib tools naming

Subject: [Boost-users] Problems of cross compiling: ar and ranlib tools naming
From: Iron Bug (death.iron.bug_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-11-25 13:04:56

I'm trying to build full cross compiled toolchain and boost is almost
ok, except of some details in static libs. The problem is that it uses
patterns like 

$(command-string) -print-prog-name=ar (and ranlib as well)

for getting the ar and ranlib for the toolset. 

But due to some bug in i686-w64-mingw32 and a whole bunch of similar
instruments (on debian, ubuntu, etc) the XXX-gcc -print-prog-name=ar
returns simply "ar", without tool prefix. Same about ranlib. And they
seem not being apt to fix it:
http://groups.google.com/group/linux.debian.bugs.dist/browse_thread/thread/8eb2bcef6fabb803/68c0cbb1e9f40ffd 

I saw an old bug ticket about this problem in old boost archives:
https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/3373

It's marked as fixed.
I added some strings to my project-config.jam like:

using gcc : : i686-w64-mingw32-gcc :
        <rc>i686-w64-mingw32-windres
        <archiver>i686-w64-mingw32-ar
        <ranlib>i686-w64-mingw32-ranlib

But it evidently had no effect, by some reason: in output I still see
strings like "/usr/bin/ar", "usr/bin/ranlib" and the librarian error
("could not read symbols: Archive has no index; run ranlib to add one")
is still there when trying to use the libraries.

I found the place in gcc.jam tool script where ar-tool name is defined:

# - The archive builder.
    local archiver = [ common.get-invocation-command gcc
            : [ NORMALIZE_PATH [ MATCH "(.*)[$(nl)]+" : [ SHELL
"$(command-string) -print-prog-name=ar" ] ] ]
            : [ feature.get-values <archiver> : $(options) ] 
            : $(bin) 
            : search-path ] ;
    toolset.flags gcc.archive .AR $(condition) : $(archiver[1]) ;
    if $(.debug-configuration)
    {
        ECHO notice: using gcc archiver :: $(condition) ::
$(archiver[1]) ;
    }

ranlib is similar, windres is kind of case of some variants.

I'm not that smart in boost build scripts but it looks like it tries to
get the name from -print-prog-name (that is buggy). Am I correct? Maybe
I'm just setting parameters in some wrong way?
I would like to get some hints how I could make it take my options from
project-config.jam and take the -print-prog-name by default. To get the
resulting tools strings like i686-w64-mingw32-ar, etc, be it a
parameters setting or patch for tools jam file, whatever that solves the
problem.

Sincerely, Yana A. Kireyonok