Re: [Boost-users] Getting started with Boost: what did you need to know?
Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2006 09:12:31 -0500 From: Deane Yang <deane_yang@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: [Boost-users] Getting started with Boost: what did you need to know?
bjam *is* difficult to learn at first. For me one reason was simply how alien it looks compared to an IDE or make. And until recently the documentation was simply incomprehensible.
Although I'm really looking forward to the new documentation Dave is going to write, the existing documentation of Boost Build v2 is really not too bad for learning how to compile and link libraries and executables.
I have shied away from boost.build v2 because it says on the opening page "an *onging project* to rewrite Boost.Build" at <<http://www.boost.org/tools/build/v2/>>--I always assumed it was not ready fro prime time. Sounds like you're saying that, from a doc point of view, it is a good resource for learning v1. I'll check it out--thanks.
And once you've got the hang of it, building software on different platforms (I've done it on Windows, Linux, Solaris, MacOSX) is incredibly easy and can be done using a single Jamfile.
Do you mean that you have adopted bjam as your day-to-day build tool? Just curious. Mike D.
Drumheller, Michael wrote:
I have shied away from boost.build v2 because it says on the opening page "an *onging project* to rewrite Boost.Build" at <<http://www.boost.org/tools/build/v2/>>--I always assumed it was not ready fro prime time. Sounds like you're saying that, from a doc point of view, it is a good resource for learning v1. I'll check it out--thanks.
No, I'm saying, use Boost Build v2 and not v1.
Do you mean that you have adopted bjam as your day-to-day build tool? Just curious.
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.
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? I see that Qt is supported, but no mention of HP-UX or FORTRAN (a few things of interest to me). A+ Paul
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
participants (3)
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Deane Yang -
Drumheller, Michael -
Paul Floyd