[boost] Installing Boost Libraries

From: Beman Dawes (beman_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-02-23 15:05:20

Jens Maurer sent me an email:

>>>>
I am missing some integrated "configure; make; make install" logic
for the whole of boost. Any other free software package you can get
your hands on is pretty idiot-proof in this respect. 

We mainly had header files in the past, so this wasn't really an
issue ("make install" is equivalent to "cp -r boost
/usr/local/include", but the odd .cpp file does crop up
(random_device.cpp, Dietmar's dir_it).
<<<<

Yes, an install is needed, and the need will grow as more non-header
code appears.

The question is what mechanism to use for an automatic install? It
would be nice if it supported several popular platforms (Say WinItel
+ Mac + several Unix) and various compilers.

I don't have much experience with cross-platform installation.  How
do other folks do it?  Do various people with specific platform
experience contribute the platform specific portions?  There needs to
be one single platform independent way of specifying what files (or
maybe just all the files in some directory) go into the build, so
that the platform specific portions don't have to be modified just
because an additional .cpp file is added to the library.

In any case, we really need a smoother installation procedure.

--Beman