On 3/26/2011 5:03 PM, Artyom wrote:
Is there a reason why Boost uses Boost.Jam/Boost.Build for reasons other
than tradition?
Boost.Build works great for those around here caring enough to maintain a build system for boost.
In other words it work for thous who:
1. Maintain the system 2. Already has BBv2 support (existing Boost.Lobraries).
Also it seams to work well enough that a new build system is not a top priority for people willing to do something about it. That said I think the fact that it is not as common and well known as some alternatives, and that it is missing some features people are expecting causes people to ask for CMake.
If fact BBv2 is total nightmare.
It took me 3 work days to make unit-tests work for Boost.Locale using BBv2 and I had to add a workaround changing the test sources itself.
1. Documentation is just missing.
2. Half of functionality Boost.Locale uses for build is undocumented and works only because it was originally written by Vladimir Prus.
And this is by-the-way after several patches applied to it in trunk.
3. Simple tasks that every normal build system supports undocumented and unclear (search library for example)
It's the documentation, not the tool itself, which is really difficult and makes Boost Build a nightmare for you. The functionality in Boost Build is very adequate and often very good. The documentation is generally poor because it does not attempt to explain all of the information in Boost Build, and what it does explain is spread out in many different areas of the documentation to the detriment of the documentation's organization. Finally, what passes for an index in the documentation indexes practically nothing and is essentially completely worthless. Added to this is that what is presented online is almost never up to date with the latest changes in the documentation, and one has a nightmare produced not by bad software but more by an attitude about the lack of importance of the documentation in actually using the system. Your comment is shooting the messenger because you don't understand the message. The message, Boost Build itself, is very neat software. The messenger, the documentation, makes it very hard to understand the message because it is not organized in a thorough way, and that makes it very hard to use the software itself except if you already know a great, great deal. When software is very good, but very complicated, it is often hard to get developers to realize that it is to their interest to explain the software as methodically and as thoroughly as they should. They often resent it because they have produced this wonderful software system which they understand, and worked very hard on, and they can not understand why others should not understand it as well as they do with the explanation they produce to suit their own needs. I honestly believe this is the mindset into which the developers of Boost Build have settled. The system itself is wonderful, and does a tremendous number of things automatically for the developer, but when the developer needs to do something outside the normal way the Boost Build system operates, it is next to impossible finding this information in the documentation, because so much is missing or just assumes that the programmer should somehow know. So I would say to you that your troubles with Boost Build are the same as my troubles with it have been periodically and those of so many Boost developers, which is not the software itself, which works wonderfully, but with understanding how to do things with the system for which the documentation simply does not provide answers or even adequate explanations. I do not have an answer for this because, like you, I am not really interested in writing the Boost Build documentation for the developers just to use the system. When I am stumped, I ask on the Boost Build mailing list, get my answer, then move on to the next time I am stumped using the system. This is not the way I like to develop but "it is what it is". But I do understand your frustration.