= CMake-Based Build System for Boost: Features =

This page describes some of the features of a CMake-based build system for Boost. Some of the features come from CMake itself, some from the Boost-specific CMake macros.

* Configuration and user experience
  * CMake is trivial to install on many platforms
  * Automatically probes for compilers, supported libraries, and tools (e.g., no need to write a user-config.jam)
  * Graphical CMake configuration makes customized builds easy
  * Uses native build tools (e.g., Visual Studio, make, Xcode, Kdevelop) to build Boost

* Portability
 * CMake works on a variety of platforms, many of which are [http://www.cdash.org/CDash/index.php?project=CMake tested nightly].
 * CMake input files are platform-independent, high-level build descriptions.

* Deployment
  * Complete support for installing from a build tree.
  * Builds [wiki:CMakeBinaryInstaller binary installers] for Boost for a variety of platforms and formats (Mac OS X packages, Windows installers, RPMs, DEBs, etc.)
  * Build system supports a modular Boost distribution, where libraries are self-contained subdirectories from which users can download and build a subset (in progress).

* Regression testing
  * Complete [wiki:CMakeTesting regression-testing support] using CTest
  * Support for submitting regression testing results to a dashboard ([http://www.cdash.org CDash], Dart, Dart2; in progress: [http://bitten.edgewall.org/ Bitten])
  * Ability to build and run regression tests against an installed Boost tree.

* Maintainability
  * CMake is open source (BSD license) and written in C++
  * CMake is actively developed and maintained by [http://www.kitware.com/ Kitware, Inc.]
  * Other, large open-source projects (including KDE, VTK) use CMake for their build system
  * The Boost-specific CMake modules are fully documented, both for Boost developers and with extensive comments within the build system itself
  * The CMake system and language is well-documented [http://cmake.org/HTML/Documentation.html online] and in the  [http://www.kitware.com/products/cmakebook.html CMake book]