Re: [boost] Re: Directory Structure

From: John Maddock (John_Maddock_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-12-15 07:30:37

>Consider: all the .hpp files have to exist somewhere.  Should they be in
>the top level source directory (boost_x.y.z/src)?  Or should they be in
>the subdirectory with the rest of each library's files?  In terms of
>unity, it seems to make more sense to put everything together.

If you mean retain all the headers in a boost/ sub-directory then yes
absolutely.  IMO messing with the current include file structure is a
serious mistake, the #include <boost/name.hpp> method works very well, and
works accross a variety of platforms as well, in fact on most systems it's
a complete no-brainer as far as I'm concerned.

They're also easy to "install" if that's what you want on linux systems
with a simple:

cp <boost-path>/boost /usr/include/boost

>I'm not sure that I agree.  From the user's perspective, installation is
>simple:
>
>       % make install prefix=/usr/local
>       or
>       % ./install.py --prefix=/usr/local
>
>From the library author's perspective, they'll need to supply a list of
>files to be installed and where to install them, either in a Makefile or
>some secondary text file.

I worry that some of this discussion is getting seriously linux oriented,
I'm not saying that we shouldn't do this, only that linux support does not
define the library structure - there are other platforms out there :-)

The main requirement is that the source files required to be built can be
found automatically by scripts so that this does not constitute a
maintenance overhead (because then makefiles can be auto-generated).  That
requirement is met either by putting the source in
"boost-root/libs/libname/src" or in "boost-root/src/libname". Personally I
am happy with the former, but will change to latter if required.

To deal with the "multiple-configuration issue", I suggest that we adopt
the STLPort approach, and place compiled libraries in separate
sub-directories, the sub-directory name being the same as the configuration
name, this is pretty much what the regex library does now for differing
compilers, and seems to work well.

Please, whatever is adapted KISS, and then some :-)

- John.