[C++-sig] Re: hello.pyd - where did it go?

[David Abrahams]

Jesper Olsen <jesper.olsen at gmail.com> writes:

> On Sun, 20 Mar 2005 15:42:01 -0500, David Abrahams
> <dave at boost-consulting.com> wrote:
>> Jesper Olsen <jesper.olsen at gmail.com> writes:

>> Well, it is our intention to fully replace distutils for the purposes
>> of C++, very soon.  And distutils was very bad at dealing with C++
>> last time I looked.
>
> I'm glad to hear that.  Nevertheless - boost is very big - much
> bigger than c-python. I put it on a webserver, where it made a
> serious dent in the harddisk space.

I'm not sure what you're getting at, but Boost.Build is an independent
component that can be used without the rest of Boost.

> Distutils is not great as a build environment - but you can tell it to
> eg. use g++ as the linker - so that your extension can be in C++ as
> long as the python interface is C...

Assuming you are using g++.  But how is it at doing C++ on other
compilers without a lot of user intervention?  That was one of the big
problems last I looked.

> But one thing I find frustrating is that it shields you from
> platform specific details - making it very hard to e.g. pass
> "unusual" options to the compiler etc.

Boost.Build also shields you, but there are plenty of "backdoor"
escapes to help you around such limitations when neccessary.

> The good thing about disutils though is that it is very easy to give
> your source code to someone else - and they will be able to install
> it and use with very little fuss.

We're hoping that will be the case with Boost.Build very soon.  Even
more so once the Python rewrite is done ;-)

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
www.boost-consulting.com