On 6/16/17 9:34 PM, David Sankel via Boost wrote:
Just to summarize:
a) Encourge library authors to include CMakeLists.txt file in their directories. If some committee wants to complain about it, we'll deal with it then.
b) Create helpful information for library authors that want to do this. I've got a good place for you to do it.
Sit back and watch your idea catch fire
:) I don't dislike this idea, but I think moving all of Boost to CMake is a big step that we *can* and *should* do. The first milestone is the most important one in my proposal.
Hmm - I'm not sure what milestone you're referring to. I'll just repeat: Start doing the above two items. I believe there is already good start at disseminating useful information in the cmake section of the incubator. You evaluate and critisize the CMakeList.txt file in the safe numerics library. You can either enhance or replace that. As far as I can I'm the only one who has actually done anything to make CMake useful to boost. But I'm certainly happy to see anyone else make an effort. I spent a fair amount of effort studying CMake with an eye to making boost work better. Here is my summary of it. a) CMake build libraries - Since most of boost is header only there's not really much for CMake to do. b) CMake to specify tests. This is the main thing that CMake can do. c) CTest sets up running the tests. Not much to after b is done. d) CDash - this interested me a lot and I spend mearsureable time with it. It embodied the idea that I would like that users run tests on their own systems for the libraries they use and results would be uploaded to a common area. Bjam does this only with all of boost at once. Since I looked at this we now have appveror, travis etc. which may fulfill some of that role. (though in my opinion they are another example of half-assed build tools). CDash is pretty much a hack and would require considerable investment of effort to even approach the information that the boost build test matrix holds. (and even the boost build test matrix needs a serious upgrade in my opinion). e) Find boost. This is for users of Boost (not authors) who use CMake on their own systems to import boost libraries. It doesn't require that boost use CMake. Fixing FindBoost might be nice - but it doesn't really have anything to do with boost itself. So for most boost libraries the only role of CMake would be to build, run and post tests. That's it. I'd like to see it done though. I would like to see uses run tests of the libraries that they use on their own systems and post the results to a common area. But this is way in the future. For now all you have to do is a) and b) above. And half of that is already done. The boost library incubator is on git hub and open to PRs to any section including the information as it relates to Cmake on boost. The safe numerics library is also on git hub and open to PR s to the CMakeList.txt files in the package. What more do you need to get started? Robert Ramey