Re: [boost] Re: Why Jam?

From: Braden McDaniel (braden_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-02-25 09:01:57

On Mon, 2002-02-25 at 06:36, Peter Dimov wrote:
> From: "Braden McDaniel" <braden_at_[hidden]>

[snip]

> * Installation
> 
> >         * If my open source project depends on Boost, how am I supposed
> >           to tell my users to install Boost?
> 
> This is pretty easy. You tell them to add -I ~/boost to the command line.
> :-)

Weak. And this does not facilitate the creation of binary packages for
boost the way a "make install" does. RPMs are a lot easier to make and
maintain if a package has a sane "make install". Ideally, Boost binary
packages would be included with my users' OS distributions. That won't
happen overnight, but "make install" is a way of oiling the gears.

There needs to be a "standard" place that Boost lives on systems. Only
users who install Boost to a nonstandard prefix should have to worry
about explicitly chasing it down every time they build a project that
depends on it.

> Either that, or _your_ configure script does that automatically.
> (configure --with-boost=~/boost, defaults to
> $(my_open_src_project_root)/include/boost, presumably.)

So you're suggesting it's reasonable for me to include a copy of Boost
in my project's distribution? Try again. It bloats my project's
distribution and, more importantly, it's a maintenance nightmare. As
I've said, this creates a lot of work downstream when the problem could
be fixed once at the source.

-- 
Braden McDaniel                           e-mail: <braden_at_[hidden]>
<http://endoframe.com>                    Jabber: <braden_at_[hidden]>