Re: Building with CMake?

From: Robert Dailey (rcdailey.lists_at_[hidden])
Date: 2019-10-08 16:33:53

On Tue, Oct 8, 2019 at 11:29 AM Mateusz Loskot via Boost-users
<boost-users_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> Boost is a collection of C++ libraries where each library has a fair bit of
> freedom of how it is being developed; each has their developers and
> maintainers who are free to add any build configuration they like as
> local/internal per the library they maintain.
>
> For example, Boost.Beast and Boost.GIL, both header-only libraries,
> allow their contributors to build tests and examples using CMake.
> So, CMake-lovers should follow instructions specific to those libraries:
> https://github.com/boostorg/gil/blob/develop/CONTRIBUTING.md
> https://github.com/boostorg/beast#building-tests-and-examples
>
> If you search carefully, you may even find .sln and .vcxproj files
> dangling in folders of some libraries. It does not mean you can build
> whole Boost by opening the .sln file in VS and hitting Ctrl+Shift+B.
>
> If there is a maintainer of a Boost library who likes Bazel or Premake,
> you may see configuration files for those as well.

Thanks for explaining. I figured it would be a little more complicated
than that because:

1. This essentially means library maintainers are choosing to maintain
at least 2 build systems (bjam for overall boost build, + whatever
preferential build system they use for the library itself).

2. Dependency management. Boost.Filesystem depends on Boost.System.
But what if Boost.System maintainers didn't want to use CMake?

I don't know how you guys are solving these problems. To me it is much
simpler to use CMake for everything. Not sure why the super repo
hasn't adopted it yet. I recall a project to do CMake for boost that
started years ago.