Background:

I am starting a new project in C++ and i first started using makefiles but very quickly they became a hassle and they couldn't do what i wanted. Then i looked into boost.build which uses bjam to build stuff. This was really nice because it could build multiple version(ie release debug) or with different compilers and they would be nicely separated in different directories and everything was nice. Then i tried to link against a library on my system ...o boy... that was a big hassle and i made a nice little hack that allowed me to do it for one library. Then now I need to link against gtkmm so i can see my program, well its giving me problems again. I also recently looked into automake(very briefly)

Questions:
Should I stick with bjam or switch over to automake?
What are the benefits of automake?
Can it create multiple targets based on the same files(ie debug/release gcc/icc)?
How easy is it to link to libraries like libgtkmm/libboost-test?

Thank you for any help you can give me.

-Stoyan

automake is more supported and comes stock with most mac and linux distributions I believe.

Don't know a whole lot about Boost but when I try to compile things that require it I find myself spending a lot of time building dependencies unless I have a package manager.

Would also like to know how it compares to automake though...

I recommend against bjam, it's hard to use. Use cmake or scons or just regular automake.