Re: [boost] Announcement: Faber, a new build system based on bjam

On 1. Dec 2017, at 07:11, Gavin Lambert via Boost wrote:

On 30/11/2017 01:59, Hans Dembinski wrote:

...

from faber.artefacts...: artefacts? The term "artefact" is very general and non-descriptive. The first definition provided by Google is essentially "human-made thing". A little more context gives it meaning (though with the US spelling):

https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=build+artifact

It's a reasonably well-known phrase, I thought.

The first link in this Google search is (at least in my search bubble) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artifact_(software_development) "An artifact occasionally may be used to refer to the released code (in the case of a code library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_(computing)) or released executable (in the case of a program) produced but the more common usage is in referring to the byproducts of software development rather than the product itself." The quote says it. In addition, the article lists so many other meanings of "artifact". And then the word itself has many other meanings in other contexts, like in compression or archeology. It is not a well-defined term. A word that has so many meanings means nothing in the end. I believe CMake calls "targets" what Faber calls "artefacts". The meaning of "targets" is pretty clear to me in the context of a build system. I think I will stop here...