"David Abrahams" <dave@boost-consulting.com> wrote in message news:uekbuw08z.fsf@boost-consulting.com...
"Jeff Flinn" <TriumphSprint2000@hotmail.com> writes:
...
I think that if the current example were as you suggest, this whole topic probably would not have come up. Issuing:
bjam "-sTOOLS=vc-7_1" install
would probably do what the majority of first time users would intuit.
Unless they did what Schobi did (twice): type ..\bjam.exe and then paste the entire command line.
But if a change like that will make a difference, send me your SF user name and I'll give you CVS access, so you can fix it.
Ok, I'm a real neophyte here though. I assume somehow that I need to get a SF user name. Any hints on doing that? Does this mean I subscribe to sourceforge?
Now my only concerns would be the ease of getting a bjam.exe available
We've always had a binary download for windows available. What more do you need?
Currently "I" don't need anything more. ;) I'll have to take a look at that again. I downloaded bjam.exe at least a couple of years ago, and copied it to my C:\boost directory. Then I copy it to each boost version directory when I download/unzip a new version of boost. I remember way back in 2000, that I was under the impression that I had to get the bjam project and build it to get a bjam.exe. Can one say that those users that download a .zip(or self extracting .exe) of boost are on windows? Couldn't a windows bjam.exe be added to the version's root directory? Then you just do a cd to C:\boost\boost_1_32_0 and run "bjam -sTOOLS=vc-7_1 install". Or possibly add a setup.bat file that you can double-click on from windows explorer?
and the inconsistency in naming for the VC targets:
msvc // VC6.5 can we add vc6_5? vc7 // VC7 would vc7_0 be better? vc-7_1 // VC7.1 why the dash? why not vc7_1?
The dash is there for dumb reasons: we call the toolset files
<toolsetname>-tools.jam
and for the purposes of building a Boost distro on CD we can't have filenames with multiple '.' characters in them, so we changed '.' to '_' in the names of things like vc-7.1-tools.jam. But we should have changed BBv1 to allow users to type a '.' on the command-line and translate it internally when we made that change; it would be pretty easy. As for naming consistency, yes, it would probably be better.
I see no problem with 7_1 rather than 7.1. I think having '.','-' and '_' in a single command line parameter is is more confusing than say 'vc7_1'.
BBv2 fixes all of these problems, and we've been reluctant to make trivial improvements in BBv1 because it's been so long anticipated that it would be retired. Now it looks like it won't be retired until just after 1.33, so it's a toss-up whether we should do anything about it. I'm willing to go either way.
Of course that would bring up the (rhetorical)question of how long before a 1.34 release? Thanks, Jeff Flinn