"Gennadiy Rozental" <gennadiy.rozental@thomson.com> writes:
"David Abrahams" <dave@boost-consulting.com> wrote in message news:u7jjz66s2.fsf@boost-consulting.com...
"Gennadiy Rozental" <gennadiy.rozental@thomson.com> writes:
What inconvenience are you actually facing? Sorry, but I did get it yet.
Let's say I want an apple sauce. Instead you giving me an apples (they may be good ones or not so much, since for sauce it doesn't really matter and why waste good apples on sauce) and saying that if I have powerful enough mixer (or whatever it called) I could get a sauce in just a second. And the reason you are telling me is that there are some people out there who may've want slightly less sugar. I believe it's not good enough: give me my sauce - I do not want spend time making one, I do not have an appropriate mixer and I do not have a space to store all these apples.
I understand what you're saying. On the other hand "install from source" has become a standard practice in the open-source world. The only thing that seems to make that argument less applicable than it would otherwise be is that this software requires a fairly conformant compiler. Right?
Not only.
1. "install from source" practice is more *nix oriented.
Irrelevant to whether that argument is less applicable to wave.
Cygwin for example doesn't require user to compile it's components
Cygwin is *nix. This is just the same as any other *nix system, where precompiled binary packages are produced by the maintainers of the OS. If I want some other arbitrary thing, like some special version of GCC, I install from source just as I would on any *nix system. I've done it many times. Yes, many projects supply precompiled binaries, but if I want something to work reliably in my environment I often find myself building it. In fact, that's the standard way to get a Python installation on *nix.
2. Wave at the moment does require conformant compiler while end ser may want to use it with different one
Yes, that's the one argument I was saying was applicable.
3. Boost is distributed as a set of libraries. The main point I am trying to make it we should separate tools into standalone packages and: a. Main delivery package includes only users docs plus location where prebuilt binaries are and where the source package is
you're suggesting that you get neither source nor tools with the "main Boost package?" That doesn't sound right.
b. We prebuilt tools for some set of OSs
Okay, well the wave tool isn't special in that regard; we have other tools we're not prebuilding.
c. Source package include reference docs and instruction how to build an executable from sources
Whoa; you intend to separate "users docs" from "reference docs?" That's a major change.
This practice could be applied to any tools including bjam and wave
And bcp, and... This sounds like a pretty ambitious plan for restructuring what we deliver. I do agree wholeheartedly that we need to reconsider the structure of what we deliver, but I don't neccessarily think this is the right plan. It doesn't seem to have precedent (at least not that I've seen), and I'd want to see a much more detailed rationale before buying into the details as you've described them. -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com