[build2] Boost package

[Boris Kolpackov]

Klaim - Joël Lamotte <mjklaim at gmail.com> writes:

>  - The conan packages looks far easier to convert to build2 (I only
> looked at boost packages though). From what I understand, package
> descriptions are simple enough that no additional tools is needed to
> process them.

I find it hard to believe. Surely you still need bjam/b2/boost-build?

On a more general note, I don't believe a fully automatic conversion
to build2 (as in, the build system) will be realistic for any non-
trivial library, let alone something like Boost.

The only more-or-less automatic approach that I can think of is to
wrap the native build system into some kind of special build2 link
rule. The nice thing about vcpkg (reportedly; we haven't tried this
ourselves) is that as part of their packaging efforts they make a
CMake-based build wrapper for whatever native build system is used
by the package. So if we were to go this route, we would just need
to interface with this wrapper rather than dealing with multiple
build systems ourselves.

In contrast, (again, according to my understanding), in Conan you
write an ad hoc Python script to build the package using whatever
native build system the package uses. Requiring Python would be
a non-starter for any integration with build2.