Re: [Devel] Relevance of FTjam wrt new Jam 2.4 ?

[Mark Leisher]

    David> As far as I know, the only comparable project I know is XFree86,
    David> which also uses its own build tool "imake", for about the same
    David> reasons. I also believe that IMake isn't a good solution for
    David> FreeType, but for different reasons..

Having used imake since it first appeared, I am of the opinion that it isn't a
good solution, period.  But I guess it did the job at the time.

    David> On the opposite, using Jam (or FTJam) results in _much_ shorter and
    David> simpler Jamfiles that are definitely easier to understand and
    David> maintain. They are portable by design, even if they can include
    David> platform-specific code paths when you need them.  They also work on
    David> VMS. I use them extensively to recompile the library with several
    David> compilers in a snap.  They're also excellent for experimentation..

What has been putting me off of learning Jam is the apparent lack of interest
by most of the free software development community.  There must be some reason
why it isn't being used, so I guess it is time to find out why.

    David> And very frankly, it's a lot easier to learn how to use Jam than to
    David> learn how to use Autoconf properly, or even how the current
    David> FreeType build system works..

Yep.  Autoconf, automake, et al. are not exactly easy to use in a significant
fashion.
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Mark Leisher
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