
on Tue May 01 2007, Richard Hadsell <hadsell-AT-blueskystudios.com> wrote:
Doug Gregor wrote:
Let me put it this way: since I wrote the "configure" script for Boost, the number of times I've been told that Boost is too hard to build (e.g., at conferences and workshops) has decreased *drastically*. bjam is powerful, but it's non-traditional. For all of the failures of autotools (and there are many!), *nix programmers understand how to build autotools-based projects and can do it very, very easily. "./configure && make && make install" is enough for the vast majority of the open source projects in the world.
I agree. It's probably fine for common cases. I only think the docs should not offer hope of configuring with an alternate compiler (at least, one that is not in the user's path) by describing environment variables that seem to have no effect.
BTW, it did the job of finding the installed Python, which is in itself an improvement.
FWIW, Boost.Build itself now has very sophisticated "installed-Python-finding" code. -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting http://www.boost-consulting.com Don't Miss BoostCon 2007! ==> http://www.boostcon.com