Re: [Boost-build] Errors when compiling Boost on Windows with MinGW

Subject: Re: [Boost-build] Errors when compiling Boost on Windows with MinGW
From: Paul (paulsteyn1_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-03-01 07:11:32

Hi All,

Thanks for the feedback so far.

> While I am not familiar with your main question, I can however
> provide you a link to the searchable mail list:
> 
> http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.build
> 
> Hope that helps,
> 
> Chris
Thanks Chris,
I searched there, but couldn't find anything relevant. Either this
problem hasn't been dealt with before, or I'm just not sure enough of
what's happening to phrase a usefull search term.

On Tue, 28 Feb 2012 15:13:21 +0100
Lars Viklund <zao_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> Was it you that I aided on IRC recently, or was that some other
> similar bloke?
Sorry, wasn't me.

> You say both "--toolset=gcc" and "toolset=gcc", while only the latter
> is valid.
I went back and redid this step using "toolset=gcc". Made no difference
to the build.log

> If you do not need Boost.Python or Boost.MPI, you don't need to build
> them and can ignore any errors caused by trying to build them.
Thanks. I don't think I need those, so I included "--without-mpi" and
"--without-python" this time around, and now build.log doesn't have
those specific errors. It still has the other errors, so I'm hoping
someone can help me with those. I've attached the latest build.log

> Whatever libraries that successfully builds will be successfully
> built, and usable.
Problem is, I'm not sure how fundamental this error is, or which
libraries it targets. I don't know the error reporting mechanism well
enough to know if this is a single error, just showing the full call
stack, or multiple errors.

> Question: Do we need to specify the toolset explicilty when invoking 
> bootstrap.bat or not
Well, when I didn't specify mingw to bootstrap.bat, it complained that
cl was not a recognised program. For some reason the check for compiler
wasn't detecting my MinGW, and was trying the VS compiler by default. A
simple fix, but
> I find the Getting Started guide a bit underdocumented and confusing.
too true. There is no talk in there of being able to specify the
compiler to bootstrap.bat. I had to read the source to figure that out.

All this is a problem when trying to compile the latest (at the
time I attempted this, only a couple of weeks ago) Boost, nothing
funny, no custom scripts or special cases, just downloading the
archive, unzipping, and following the Getting Started instructions. I
realise the MinGW's MSYS environment isn't supported, but I can't
believe that MinGW's gcc isn't supported. This should a) not be
throwing compile errors AT ALL (not with a default unzip and compile),
and b) not require parameters not talked about in the Getting Started
guide. This really should be a simple, painless and well documented
setup for people.

Does anybody have more knowledge of what the build errors mean? Is it a
problem with the build scripts in the Boost 1.49.0 package, or is there
something funky about my system? Where do I start looking? Anybody?

Thanks again for the help so far, and any further help anybody can
provide.

Paul