Re: [Boost-users] A plea for simpler tools

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] A plea for simpler tools
From: Jim Bell (Jim_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-02-13 15:52:40

On 2/13/2012 2:20 PM, Robert Ramey wrote:
> Let me start by saying I love Boost and C++ as much or more than anyone
> here!!!

Let ME start by saying I appreciate you staying as involved with Boost 
as you have been.  Authors disappearing is Boost's biggest problem 
(IMHO) and you haven't.

> But I'm really frustrated with the boost tools and believe they are a
> serious impediment to the progress of boost.  Here is what I want to be able
> to do: [...]

A "bjam Cookbook" would be very useful.  Working examples that 
accomplish reasonably simple things.

We mere mortals look at parts of boost that frustrate us and blame 
ourselves for not "getting it." It's good to hear we're not alone. (I 
realize that many give up too quickly, too.)

I don't want this to be a bjam pile-on, either -- what it does for the 
regression tests is very impressive. But sometimes it feels that if bjam 
strays off a well-worn path, you can get a big, bad, intimidating 
stack-dump through scads of platform-specific files, whose contents you 
can neither understand nor verify.

I know there was a Boost.CMake effort a while back, probably motivated 
by just what you wrote. That would be fine, too.