Compiling in native Windows, with MSVC8 (2005) Express

[Geoff McLane <ubuntu@…>]

Not really a bug... Just some advice for others...

It took me quite a few HOURS to track down a strange batch file abort, with a long message something like :-

\Utilities\Bin\x86";C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS; C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem;C:\Program Files\Intel\DMIX; C:\Program Files\Common Files\Roxio Shared\DLLShared\; ... etc ... ending with 'was unexpected at this time.'

It turned out to be a SIMPLE problem, but not exactly sure why the batch file interpreter got tripped on a PATH ')', while in a batch bracketed (...) statement ...

The problem was my environment PATH string contained brackets, ( ), for the DirectX SDK, like :- PATH=C:\Perl\site\bin;C:\Perl\bin; "C:\Program Files\Microsoft DirectX SDK (October 2006)\Utilities\Bin\x86"; C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem; ...

Once I renamed this DirectX SDK directory to _NOT_ have brackets, and adjusted the Control Panel -> [Environment Variables]..., and MSVC8 Options... -> VC++ Directories, the 'bjam' batch build system worked like a charm with MSVC8... Thanks...

Maybe a note like - make sure your PATH does _NOT_ contain brackets! () - could be added in the 'bootstrap.bat', or the 'tools\jam\src\build.bat', for others who run across this problem.

Or be added to the documentation somewhere concerning bjam building in windows... I searched, but could not find anything similar...

Hope this helps, and thanks for a great set of headers, and now static libraries ;=))

Regards,

Geoff.

Some Ref. Info. OS: Windows XP SP3 32-bits Box: Dell Dimension DXP061 CPU: Intel Core2 6400 @ 2.13GHz MSVC: Visual Studio 2005 (MSVC8), .NET 2.0.50727 SVN: Boost trunk, updated to 2010-07-02 Boost.Build V2 (Milestone 12) Boost.Jam 03.1.19 Boost_Version 104400, LIB_VERSION "1_44"

[Steven Watanabe]

I'm not sure why this would be. I have "C:\Program Files (x86)\..." in my path and it runs without problems on Windows 7. Anyway, I can't do anything about this without the full output. You haven't provided enough information for me to figure out what the offending command is.

[anonymous]

Hi Steven,

Thanks for picking up on this. It came as a bit of a surprise for me, 7 months later, and hope I remember everything correctly ;=)).

But, sorry, not sure what additional information I could provide? I was in a VS 2005 prompt, ran bootstrap.bat, which then runs build.bat...

As indicated, I did NOT catch the full batch error message, but it ended in the stated - <big string> 'was unexpected at this time'.

So I too do not know the exact offending command... cmd.ex is very terse ;=(( and your build.bat is quite complicated to follow... and uses bracketing ( ) very frequently... and calls...

Anyway when I remove the ( ) from my PATH it went away. This was in XP SP3 as stated, and am very happy you can not repeat it in Windows 7.

Maybe MS have 'fixed' this command interpreter 'bug' on the release of Windows 7? just dunno ;=((

Anyway, hope this helps...

Regards,

Geoff.