[boost] Re: Re: Customer Friendlier Boost Installation

From: Jeff Flinn (TriumphSprint2000_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-05-25 10:37:12

"Paul A Bristow" <pbristow_at_[hidden]> wrote in message 
news:E1Dax3q-0002Nb-3U_at_he303war.uk.vianw.net...
> Looks very promising for the headers only (though it doesn't mention VS 8
> and to avoid being outdated soon, it probably should).

Agreed, but I don't have VS8 here. We still have barely moved from VS6.5 to 
VS7.1. Finding things between VS6.5 and VS7.1 is very different, I'm not 
sure how much changes with VS8. I'll have to try out the silly 'Do Not 
Disturb' card that came in the latest CUJ.

> (BTW VS * Express beta 2 has the feature to set include directories 
> removed
> by mistake - so you have to edit the xml project file info as a 
> workaround!)
>
> And recommending a top level ./boost directory means that one will 
> probably
> blow the max recommended directory depth for recording onto CDs for 
> backup?

I haven't had that problem, since I copy the latest boost version from my 
harddrive to a network drive once I've built the libraries. The net drive is 
used by our build system, and backed up by out sys admin. I've never heard 
complaints there.

> And it might be better to recommend a separate partition, say D:?

Why so? I've got the last 5 versions of boost existing on my system with no 
problem. Seems that a recommendation like that could end up scaring 
potential users.

> And what about building the libraries with bjam ?

Sorry, I was responding to your specific request:

"I suggest that we explicitly say that you can use all of Boost (except the
ones that must have built libraries) by adding to the include list - and say
exactly how in Windows IDE-ese."

> Or could we ship the common .lib versions pre-built for MS?
> The test library is the one most people NEED.

I'm not sure of the utility if the intent is to allow users access to 
header-only libraries so that they don't have to use bjam to do any 
building.

> Then we would just need to say how to copy to the MS/lib directory.

My stage directory for boost_1_32_0 is 570MB, which includes all 
debug/release variants for VC7.1(excluding python). Even with compression 
this could still be a quite large download.

Jeff Flinn