On 09/05/07, Michael Caisse <boost@objectmodelingdesigns.com> wrote:
<snip>
All this to say... I don't care as a user how it builds as long as it is easy to do.
Yup. This brings up the point that there is no INSTALL file in the source tree. A link to the new getting started guide would make sense, IMHO. Library Author Experience -
All I can comment here is that I don't see a lot of complaints that bjam and Boost.Build don't do what people need. I see complaints that people have to learn another build tool or that the current tool is under-documented. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my own experience for both library and application development (including writing custom generators) has been that the Boost.Build system is more than capable. I am sure this didn't come overnight and that there has been enormous thought and iteration to create such a system. So now that there is one... what is the effort to maintain it?
I can't help wondering how much of the apathy towards Boost.Build is borne out of the awkwardness of BBv1 and the countless support requests that came in regarding it. BBv2 is so much cleaner and Simply more intuitive than BBv1 that I (for one) hope it stays under development. If this CMake transition happens, I can only see it being forgotten about and fading into obscurity. I just hope BBv2 isn't skipped over too quickly before we assume there is as much resistance to it as there was to BBv1. Saying that - please correct me if I'm wrong - but a CMake transition, if it happened, doesn't sound like it would happen before 1.36. I suppose that means BBv2 at least has _some_ time to prove its worth. Darren