[How did this message end up on the boost developers' list? I set the followup-to header so that it would go to boost-build, *and* I explicitly asked for followups to go there at the top of my previous message.] on Wed Feb 21 2007, Vladimir Prus <ghost-AT-cs.msu.su> wrote:
David Abrahams wrote:
* If we drop the ability to arbitrarily choose a version string, we need a way to identify different configurations of a toolset that may have the same version number. For example:
- You may have both Cygwin and MinGW gcc 3.4 installed
- You may want to experiment with a special gcc build having C++0x features
- You may need a convenient way to identify a special configuration of an existing toolset.
The solution we came up with is to add an optional argument to "using" that allows you to create a special toolset subfeature on-the-fly, something like:
using gcc : 3.4 : /usr/local/conceptgcc/bin/g++ : conceptgcc ;
This feature could then also be used to identify the toolset on the command-line, something like:
bjam toolset=conceptgcc
I'm actually not sure if using "toolset=XXX" like this to alias to some other set of properties is good idea -- we might end up with lots of corner cases.
What kind of corner cases?
I'd much rather have some "user-defined" subfeature,
Yeah, that's exactly what using gcc : 3.4 : /usr/local/conceptgcc/bin/g++ : conceptgcc ; is supposed to create. Or at least, a value of an implicit user-defined subfeature, e.g. <flavor>conceptgcc
and then use:
gcc-3.4-conceptgcc,
Fine.
or maybe
gcc-3.4 flavour=conceptgcc
I don't like that one, because, for example, you might want to build with plain gcc-3.4 as well as the conceptgcc flavor.
or maybe
gcc-3.4 <some-better-feature-name>=conceptgcc
The US English spelling of flavor is shorter. "spin?" "charm?" Just kidding; I think "flavor" is fine. -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com