[boost] Re: Questions re Jamfile for testing

From: Edward Diener (eddielee_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-12-04 13:08:09

Rene Rivera wrote:
> Edward Diener wrote:
>
>> I have argued this case before in general, and agree with it.
>
> I think I've been in that argument ;-)
>
>> In all the
>> dlls and libs which I have ever created as a Windows programmer I
>> have followed this pattern.
>
> I haven't. For me the choice of runtime has always been independent of
> the type of product I'm building.

When building products for yourself, you can choose your own mix. When
distributing 3rd party libraries which use auto-linking, you need to decide
how that should work for others. I still think that auto-linking should be
dynamic rtl-dll and static rtl-static lib. Of course a more flexible system
might allow auto-linking to be turned off and the end-programmer allowed to
manually choose.

>
>> When distributing third-party libraries I think it is
>> normal to distribute either an all dll system, with all dlls using
>> the dll version of the compiler's run-time library, or a single
>> executable, with all libraries linked being static libraries which
>> use the compiler's static version of the run-time library.
>
> That is not a binary comparison. It's common to distribute executables
> with dlls and use the dynamic runtime. It's also common to distribute
> libs that use the dynamic runtime, so that users can build either exes
> or dlls from that library.

What about the user who wants to use one's 3rd party library and wants to
distribute the final executable as a self-contained file not relying on any
other dlls ? This can not be done if you only have libraries, whether static
or dynamic, which use the run-time dlls. Of course you may argue that a user
who wishes to do this is not very common, but my experience is that they
are, and are pretty adamant that such a scenario should be supported by 3rd
party libraries which they use.