Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by twic 2851 days ago
I've been recommended Boost.Build, aka b2, the build system Boost uses to build itself, but also usable for any other project:

https://boostorg.github.io/build/manual/develop/

3 comments

Beware! At a previous job, Boost Build was easily one of the most unpopular aspects of the tech stack. It had 5% of people evangelizing it, and they were also the only ones who “got” the complicated Jam file arrangement. The rest of us couldn’t stand it. Just way too abstruse IMHO.
I used Boost Build for years, but I never figured out how to do anything but copy/paste our existing build files. I found scraps of documentation on Jam here and there, but it never made much sense when I looked at our code. I later discovered CMake and found it much, much easier to learn.

On an unrelated note, the best comment I have ever come across is related to Boost Build: https://github.com/openembedded/openembedded/blob/fabd8e6d07...

Boost.Build is so good that even Boost is moving to CMake
Did they also recommend any documentation or examples? Because I've yet to find anything that comes close to the extensive CMake documentation. Heck, even GNU autotools have better docs and examples than b2.