On Tue, May 21, 2024 at 7:28 PM Peter Dimov via Boost
It's interesting that nobody considers the possibility that b2 is in fact a better build system than CMake, and consequently, that switching from b2 to CMake will actually make things _worse_ in some, if not many, respects.
There's this axiomatic assumption that dropping b2 will automatically improve things, somehow, and I don't think it's true or warranted.
For what it's worth, I'm not proposing anything concrete or actionable. But I was, ironically, musing the other day if b2 was holding Boost back from receiving more outside contributions. If we want Boost to survive and thrive, we need contributors. Potential contributors don't know b2, they know CMake. We can argue that yes, libraries support CMake and contributors can use that as their primary tooling but b2 will eventually worm its way into the equation. Whether or not b2 is a better build system is irrelevant because no one knows it and no one seems keen on learning it. It's relegated solely to Boost and its developers. All that being said, this was just something I was musing. I have no idea in all actuality if completely dropping b2 will bring contributors back to Boost. But I kind of agree with Richard in that, I think it is a turn off. The usage of "warranted" stood out to me, btw. We should regularly evaluate our tools and consider technical costs and potential directions we might want to steer the project. Where will Boost be and what state will it be in five years from now? What state do we want it to be in? - Christian