On Tue, 2017-07-18 at 06:12 -0700, Jon Kalb via Boost wrote:
The libraries produced by the Boost community have had a greater impact on the way that the C++ community writes code than any other library implementation. The focus of the Boost community will always be on the libraries, but it is undeniable that we are dependent on and often limited by the infrastructure of our trade. Years ago, the move to Git was contentious; yet, it was required to improve development. In a similar vein our build system has become an impediment for many developers and users, existing and prospective.
Therefore, we, the Steering Committee, announce to the Boost community our desire and intent to move Boost’s build system to CMake for users and developers alike. We are soliciting comments and proposals from the community to guide the process and the goals. Our desire is that the community can come to consensus by the end of the calendar year with a vision of supporting users and developers.
Ultimately, we want to support both use cases for cmake: * Prebuilt libraries through `find_package` * Integrated builds through `add_subdirectroy` I have setup an initial build of cmake that supports this. Of course, there is more work to be done. To make these changes, I setup scripts that can be used to generate cmake from mustache templates. This will make it easier to experiment with different cmake designs as we move forward: https://github.com/pfultz2/boost-cmake I mainly was following Daniel Pfeifer's Effective CMake, which is why the template directory is called effective. However, I am working on some modules to help generate configuration and to help provide some of the other missing pieces from boost.build. It can also help reduce the repitition. I would like to explore this option more as well with community feedback.