B2 fails to use quoted path invocation for the archiver program.

[walbourn]

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Environment and version details

• Operating System+version: Windows 11
• Compiler+version: clang/LLVM for Windows 15.0.1
• CMake 3.25.1

Brief problem description

I'm working on implementing clang-cl triplets for the VCPKG manager, and encountered an issue unique to boost building. The problem is that I'm attempting to use the built-in Visual Studio version of clang-cl. In this scenario, the b2 tool is properly quoting and fixing-up the compiler and linker paths, but not the librarian paths.

Actual behavior summary

Via CMake, the toolset variables are set as follows:

CMAKE_AR:FILEPATH=C:/Program Files/Microsoft Visual Studio/2022/Community/VC/Tools/Llvm/x64/bin/llvm-lib.exe
CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER:STRING=C:/Program Files/Microsoft Visual Studio/2022/Community/VC/Tools/Llvm/x64/bin/clang-cl.exe
CMAKE_C_COMPILER:STRING=C:/Program Files/Microsoft Visual Studio/2022/Community/VC/Tools/Llvm/x64/bin/clang-cl.exe

The B2 summary prints out:

notice: [msvc-cfg] msvc-14.3 detected, command: 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\VC\Tools\MSVC\14.16.27023\bin\HostX64\x64\cl.exe'
notice: [clang-win] using compiler '"C:/Program Files/Microsoft Visual Studio/2022/Community/VC/Tools/Llvm/x64/bin/clang-cl.exe"', version '143', target 'x86_64', default address-model=64
notice: will use 'C:/Program Files/Microsoft Visual Studio/2022/Community/VC/Tools/Llvm/x64/bin/clang-cl.exe' for clang-win, condition <toolset>clang-win-143
notice: [clang-win] x86-32: using linker '"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio\\2022\\Community\\VC\\Tools\\MSVC\\14.35.32215\\bin\\Hostx64\\x86\\link.exe"'
notice: [clang-win] x86-32: using assembler '"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio\\2022\\Community\\VC\\Tools\\MSVC\\14.35.32215\\bin\\Hostx64\\x86\ml.exe"'
notice: [clang-win] x86-32: using archiver 'C:/Program Files/Microsoft Visual Studio/2022/Community/VC/Tools/Llvm/x64/bin/llvm-lib.exe'

Note that linker and assembler are using quoted. archiver is not.

This results in the following build failure:

compile-c-c++ D:\vcpkg\buildtrees\boost-exception\x64-clangcl-dynamic-dbg\boost\build\9ce0872fe7feae3839f2236f8df9a6f4\clone_current_exception_non_intrusive.obj

     "C:/Program Files/Microsoft Visual Studio/2022/Community/VC/Tools/Llvm/x64/bin/clang-cl.exe" --target=x86_64-pc-windows-msvc "..\src\clone_current_exception_non_intrusive.cpp" -c -Fo"D:\vcpkg\buildtrees\boost-exception\x64-clangcl-dynamic-dbg\boost\build\9ce0872fe7feae3839f2236f8df9a6f4\clone_current_exception_non_intrusive.obj"     -TP /EHs /GR -nologo -DWIN32 -D_WINDOWS -W3 -utf-8 -GR -EHsc -MP -m64 -D_DEBUG -MDd -Z7 -Ob0 -Od -RTC1 /Z7 /Od /Ob0 /W3 /MDd -DBOOST_ALL_NO_LIB=1 "-I..\include" "-ID:\vcpkg\installed\x64-clangcl-dynamic\include" 

clang-cl: warning: argument unused during compilation: '-MP' [-Wunused-command-line-argument]

        if exist "D:\vcpkg\buildtrees\boost-exception\x64-clangcl-dynamic-dbg\boost\build\9ce0872fe7feae3839f2236f8df9a6f4\libboost_exception-clangw143-mt-gd-x64-1_82.lib" DEL "D:\vcpkg\buildtrees\boost-exception\x64-clangcl-dynamic-dbg\boost\build\9ce0872fe7feae3839f2236f8df9a6f4\libboost_exception-clangw143-mt-gd-x64-1_82.lib"
         C:/Program Files/Microsoft Visual Studio/2022/Community/VC/Tools/Llvm/x64/bin/llvm-lib.exe /nologo  /out:"D:\vcpkg\buildtrees\boost-exception\x64-clangcl-dynamic-dbg\boost\build\9ce0872fe7feae3839f2236f8df9a6f4\libboost_exception-clangw143-mt-gd-x64-1_82.lib" "D:\vcpkg\buildtrees\boost-exception\x64-clangcl-dynamic-dbg\boost\build\9ce0872fe7feae3839f2236f8df9a6f4\clone_current_exception_non_intrusive.obj"   
    
'C:/Program' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
...skipped <pD:\vcpkg\buildtrees\boost-exception\x64-clangcl-dynamic-dbg\stage\lib>libboost_exception-clangw143-mt-gd-x64-1_82.lib for lack of <pD:\vcpkg\buildtrees\boost-exception\x64-clangcl-dynamic-dbg\boost\build\9ce0872fe7feae3839f2236f8df9a6f4>libboost_exception-clangw143-mt-gd-x64-1_82.lib...
...failed updating 1 target...
ninja: build stopped: subcommand failed.

The compiler got quoted in the shell execution but the archiver did not.

Expected behavior summary

It looks like when passed in from CMake, the non-native paths are kept, but because the compiler invocation is quoted it works. The archiver needs the same quoting.

[Kojoley]

@grafikrobot do you it would be possible to automatically quote variable expansions in actions? At least just simple expansions and bail out on things where it catenates with words/varexps. Escaping for shells is so error prone that it needs some sort of a general solution. It probably also needs to support already quoted stuff so things like #309 won't happen.

[grafikrobot]

@Kojoley one option is to have a special kind of expansion, in general, that does quoting, path, etc fixups after/around other expressions/variable. Maybe /($(a)/$(b).$(c)) (the "/" being the do path, quote, escape handling prefix). But I suspect it's not safe at this point to use that.

[grafikrobot]

But ultimately.. avoiding using batch/shell invocation entirely by executing the command directly is the real solution.

[grafikrobot]

@walbourn you say "Via CMake, the toolset variables are set as follows". How are you setting up b2 with those variable?