Re: [cpp-netlib-devel] Bjam woes

[Dean M. C. B. <dmb...@fr...>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: cpp...@li... 
> [mailto:cpp...@li...] On 
> Behalf Of Michael Dickey
> Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 11:39 PM
> To: C++ Networking Library Developers Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [cpp-netlib-devel] Bjam woes
> 
> I tried setting those two env variables on my second test.  I 
> discovered that there are two more subtle requirements to 
> this approach:
> 
> a) your "BOOST_ROOT" directory needs to be writable
> b) the code in your "BOOST_ROOT" directory needs to be built
> 
> although I suspect b) might not be necessary if the directory 
> is writable
> 

Yes, if it's already writable, the required libraries will be built when
running bjam in the test directory. :)

> I think that having simple ./configure + make to wrap the 
> bjam stuff would make things much easier to use, sort of like 
> what is available for the main boost distribution..  In 
> particular, it could find where you bjam is located, and 
> allow you to set the location of your
> (source) BOOST_ROOT, or alternatively to specify an "installed"  
> location of the boost libraries.  If the latter, it would 
> just write a new Jamroot file that takes an approach similar 
> to Andreas (specify the include locations and libraries we 
> need to link with explicitly).
> 

This is fine, however, the main appeal of using just Bjam is that it
works in Windows without requiring the autotools to be there. For
example, I develop both on Windows and Linux -- this allows me to use
the same build tool and process on either platform.

And no, installing cygwin is not an option for me. ;)

> I realize this would all be redundant after it's (hopefully) 
> included in the Boost distro, but in the meantime I think it 
> would make things much easier to use. I can take a stab at 
> this, since I've grown quite familiar with autotools over the 
> past year..
> 

Agreed, but it would only be useful for people who use Linux or UNIX
like systems that have make available. :)

> Regarding the unit test libraries, these seem to be built and 
> included in the distro by default on most platforms anyway.  
> Plus, since cpp- netlib is taking a headers-only approach, 
> the unit tests are the only thing someone can build.  So it 
> seems like a reasonable requirement that you can't "build" 
> cpp-netlib without having the unit test library to link with.
> 

Yes. And actually, we can even package Boost.Test and all the other
Boost Libraries along with the cpp-netlib if we really want to go and
make it self-contained. ;)

--
Dean Michael Berris
Software Engineer, Friendster, Inc.
<dmb...@fr...>
+639287291459