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-rw-r--r--docs/cmake.md113
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+Library naming
+--------------
+
+The way Boost names library files by default is insane. It's absolutely not compatible between
+OSs, compilers, Boost versions, etc. On Linux, for example, it would create
+stage/lib/libboost_filesystem.a, while on Windows it would become something insane like
+stage\lib\libboost_filesystem-vc142-mt-s-x64-1_72.lib. More than that, older Boost versions
+wouldn't include architecture information (the "x64" part) in the file name, so you couldn't
+store libraries for both x86 and x64 in the same directory. On Linux, on the other hand, you
+can't even store debug/release binaries in the same directory. What's worse is that older CMake
+versions don't support the architecture suffix, choking on the Windows example above.
+
+With all of that in mind, I decided to bring some uniformity by sacrificing some flexibility.
+b2 is called with --layout=system, and libraries are put to stage/<platform>/<configuration>/lib,
+where <platform> is x86/x64 and <configuration> is CMake's CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE. That means that I
+can't have libraries with different runtime-link values in the same directory, but I don't really
+care.
+
+Hate speech
+-----------
+
+Is there a person who doesn't hate Boost.Build? I'm not sure, I'm definitely
+_not_ one of these people. Maybe it's the lack of adoption (meaning that
+learning it is useless outside of Boost), maybe it's the incomprehensible
+syntax. Maybe it's the absolutely insane compiler-specific configuration
+files (tools/build/src/tools/*.jam), which are impossible to figure out.
+Maybe it's the fact that the implementation switched from C to C++ while some
+half-baked Python implementation has been there since at least 2015 (see the
+marvelous memo "Status: mostly ported." at the top of tools/build/src/build_system.py).
+
+What I hate the most though is how its various subtle, implicit and invisible
+decision-making heuristics changed thoughout the release history of Boost.
+You have a config and a compiler that will happily build version 1.65.0?
+Great! Want to use the same config and the same compiler to build version
+1.72.0? Well, too fucking bad, it doesn't work anymore. This I really do
+hate the most.
+
+Three kinds of toolsets
+-----------------------
+
+b2 accepts the toolset= parameter. What about building b2 itself though?
+Well, this is what the bootstrap.{sh,bat} scripts do. They also accept a
+toolset argument, but it is _completely_ different to that of b2. That's
+sort of OK, since e.g. cross-compiling b2 is something we rarely want to do
+(and hence there must typically be a native toolset available).
+
+bootstrap.sh and bootstrap.bat are completely different (of course!), and
+accept different arguments for their toolset parameters.
+
+Config file insanity
+--------------------
+
+Say, we're building Boost on Windows using the GCC from a MinGW-w64
+distribution. We can pass toolset=gcc and all the required flags on the
+command line no problem. What if we want to make a user configuration file
+so that 1) the command line is less polluted, and 2) it can possibly be
+shared? Well, if we put
+
+ using gcc : : : <name>value... ;
+
+there, Boost 1.65.0 will happily build everything, while Boost 1.72.0 will
+complain about "duplicate initialization of gcc". This is because when we
+ran `bootstrap.bat gcc` earlier, it wrote `using gcc ;` in project-config.jam.
+And while Boost 1.65.0 detects that toolset=gcc means we're going to use the
+MinGW GCC, and magically turns toolset=gcc to toolset=gcc-mingw, Boost 1.72.0
+does no such thing, and chokes on the "duplicate" GCC declaration.
+
+We also cannot put
+
+ using gcc : custom : : <options> ;
+
+without the executable path, since Boost insists that `g++ -dumpversion` must
+equal to "custom" (which makes total sense, lol). So we have to force it,
+and do provide the path.
+
+Windows & Clang
+---------------
+
+Building Boost using Clang on Windows is a sad story. As of 2020, there're
+three main ways to install the native Clang toolchain on Windows:
+
+ * download the installer from llvm.org (`choco install llvm` does this)
+ a.k.a. the upstream,
+ * install it as part of a MSYS2 installation (`pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-clang`),
+ * install as part of a Visual Studio installation.
+
+Using the latter method, you can switch a project to use the LLVM toolset
+using Visual Studio, but that's stupid. The former two, on the other hand,
+give us the the required clang/clang++/clang-cl executables, so everything
+seems to be fine.
+
+Except it's not fine. Let's start with the fact that prior to 1.66.0,
+toolset=clang is completely broken on Windows. It's just an alias for
+clang-linux, and it's hardcoded to require the ar & ranlib executables to
+create static libraries. Which is fine on Linux, since, and I'm quoting the
+source, "ar is always available". But it's not fine on Windows, since
+ar/ranlib are not, in fact, available there by default. Sure, you can
+install some kind of MinGW toolchain, and it might even work, but what the
+hell, honestly?
+
+Luckily, both the upstream distribution and the MSYS2 mingw-w64-x86_64-llvm
+package come with the llvm-ar and llvm-ranlib utilities. So we can put
+something like this in the config:
+
+ using clang : custom : clang++.exe : <archiver>llvm-ar <ranlib>llvm-ranlib.exe ;
+
+and later call
+
+ b2 toolset=clang-custom --user-config=path/to/config.jam ...
+
+But, as I mentioned, prior to 1.66.0, toolset=clang is _hardcoded_ to use ar
+& ranlib, these exact utility names. So either get them as part of some
+MinGW distribution or build Boost using another toolset.
+
+Now, it's all fine, but building stuff on Windows adds another thing into the
+equation: debug runtimes. When you build Boost using MSVC, for example, it
+picks one of the appropriate /MT[d] or /MD[d] flags to build the Boost
+libraries with. Emulating these flags with toolset=clang is complicated and
+inconvenient. Luckily, there's the clang-cl.exe executable, which aims to
+provide command line interface compatible with that of cl.exe.
+
+Boost.Build even supports toolset=clang-win, which should use clang-cl.exe.
+But alas, it's completely broken prior to 1.69.0. It just doesn't work at
+all. So, if you want to build w/ clang-cl.exe, either use Boost 1.69.0 or
+later, or build using another toolset.
+
+Cygwin & Clang
+--------------
+
+Now, a few words about Clang on Cygwin. When building 1.65.0, I encountered
+the following error:
+
+ /usr/include/w32api/synchapi.h:127:26: error: conflicting types for 'Sleep'
+ WINBASEAPI VOID WINAPI Sleep (DWORD dwMilliseconds);
+ ^
+ ./boost/smart_ptr/detail/yield_k.hpp:64:29: note: previous declaration is here
+ extern "C" void __stdcall Sleep( unsigned long ms );
+ ^
+
+GCC doesn't emit an error here because /usr/include is in a pre-configured
+"system" include directories list, and the declaration there take precedence,
+I guess? The root of the problem BTW is that sizeof(unsigned long) is
+
+ * 4 for MSVC and MinGW-born GCCs,
+ * 8 for Clang (and, strangely, Cygwin GCC; why don't we get runtime
+ errors?).
+
+The fix is to add `define=BOOST_USE_WINDOWS_H`. I don't even know what's the
+point of not having it as a default.
diff --git a/docs/cmake.md b/docs/cmake.md
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+Default generator
+-----------------
+
+As of CMake 3.18, the default generator (unless set explicitly) is:
+ * the newest Visual Studio or "NMake Makefiles" on Windows,
+ * "Unix Makefiles" otherwise.
+This is regardless of whether any executables like gcc, cl or make are
+available [1].
+
+Makefile generators
+-------------------
+
+CMake has a number of "... Makefiles" generators. "Unix Makefiles" uses
+gmake/make/smake, whichever is found first, and cc/c++ for compiler
+detection [2]. "MinGW Makefiles" looks for mingw32-make.exe in a number of
+well-known locations, uses gcc/g++ directly, and is aware of windres [3]. In
+addition, "Unix Makefiles" uses /bin/sh as the SHELL value in the Makefile,
+while the MinGW version uses cmd.exe. I don't think it matters on Windows
+though, since the non-existent /bin/sh is ignored anyway [4]. "NMake
+Makefiles" is similar, except it defaults to using cl [5].
+
+It's important to _not_ use the -A parameter with any of the Makefile
+generators - it's an error. This goes for "NMake Makefiles" also. "NMake
+Makefiles" doesn't attempt to search for installed Visual Studio compilers,
+you need to use it from one of the Visual Studio-provided shells.
+
+Visual Studio generators
+------------------------
+
+These are special. They ignore the CMAKE_<LANG>_COMPILER parameters and use
+cl by default [9]. They support specifying the toolset to use via the -T
+parameter (the "Platform Toolset" value in the project's properties) since
+3.18 [10]. The toolset list varies between Visual Studio versions, and I'm
+too lazy to learn exactly which version supports which toolsets.
+
+cmake --build uses msbuild with Visual Studio generators. You can pass the
+path to a different cl.exe by doing something like
+
+ msbuild ... /p:CLToolExe=another-cl.exe /p:CLToolPath=C:\parent\dir
+
+It's important that the generators for Visual Studio 2017 or older use Win32
+Win32 as the default platform [12]. Because of that, we need to pass the -A
+parameter.
+
+mingw32-make vs make
+--------------------
+
+No idea what the actual differences are. The explanation in the FAQ [6]
+about how GNU make "is lacking in some functionality and has modified
+functionality due to the lack of POSIX on Win32" isn't terribly helpful.
+
+It's important that you can install either on Windows (`choco install make`
+for GNU make and `choco install mingw` to install a MinGW-w64 distribution
+with mingw32-make.exe included). Personally, I don't see any difference
+between using either make.exe or mingw32-make.exe w/ CMake on Windows. But,
+since MinGW-w64 distributions do include mingw32-make.exe and not make.exe,
+we'll try to detect that.
+
+Cross-compilation
+-----------------
+
+If you want to e.g. build x86 binary on x64 and vice versa, the easiest way
+seems to be to make a CMake "toolchain file", which initializes the proper
+compiler flags (like -m64/-m32, etc.). Such file could look like this:
+
+ set(CMAKE_C_COMPILER gcc)
+ set(CMAKE_C_FLAGS -m32)
+ set(CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER g++)
+ set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS -m32)
+
+You can then pass the path to it using the CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE parameter.
+
+If you use the Visual Studio generators, just use the -A parameter, like "-A
+Win32".
+
+As a side note, if you want to cross-compile between x86 and x64 using GCC on
+Ubuntu, you need to install the gcc-multilib package.
+
+Windows & Clang
+---------------
+
+Using Clang on Windows is no easy task, of course. Prior to 3.15, there was
+no support for building things using the clang++.exe executable, only
+clang-cl.exe was supported [7]. If you specified -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++,
+CMake would stil pass MSVC-style command line options to the compiler (like
+/MD, /nologo, etc.), which clang++ doesn't like [8].
+
+So, in summary, you can only use clang++ since 3.15. clang-cl doesn't work
+with Visual Studio generators unless you specify the proper toolset using the
+-T parameter. You can set the ClToolExe property using msbuild, but while
+that might work in practice, clang-cl.exe needs to map some unsupported
+options for everything to work properly. For an example of how this is done,
+see the LLVM.Cpp.Common.* files at [11].
+
+I recommend using Clang (either clang-cl or clang++ since 3.15) using the
+"NMake Makefiles" generator.
+
+References
+----------
+
+[1]: cmake::EvaluateDefaultGlobalGenerator
+ https://github.com/Kitware/CMake/blob/v3.18.4/Source/cmake.cxx
+[2]: https://github.com/Kitware/CMake/blob/v3.18.4/Source/cmGlobalUnixMakefileGenerator3.cxx
+[3]: https://github.com/Kitware/CMake/blob/v3.18.4/Source/cmGlobalMinGWMakefileGenerator.cxx
+[4]: https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Choosing-the-Shell.html
+[5]: https://github.com/Kitware/CMake/blob/v3.18.4/Source/cmGlobalNMakeMakefileGenerator.cxx
+[6]: http://mingw.org/wiki/FAQ
+[7]: https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.15/release/3.15.html#compilers
+[8]: https://github.com/Kitware/CMake/blob/v3.14.7/Modules/Platform/Windows-Clang.cmake
+[9]: https://gitlab.kitware.com/cmake/cmake/-/issues/19174
+[10]: https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.8/release/3.8.html
+[11]: https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/tree/e408935bb5339e20035d84307c666fbdd15e99e0/llvm/tools/msbuild
+[12]: https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.18/generator/Visual%20Studio%2015%202017.html