[boost] Re: Customer Friendlier Boost Installation

From: Loïc Joly (loic.actarus.joly_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-05-26 16:22:44

Paul A Bristow a écrit :

 > Recently we had a flurry of discussion of why Boost is not more 
widely used.
 >
 > I have used some bits of Boost happily for years, but recently I felt 
I had
 > to use it 'properly' so concluded it was time I used the bjam build 
system -
 > something I had felt looked a bit clever.
 >
 >

First of all : a disclaimer: I just skimmed through the whole 
discussion, so the points in my posts might be adressed somewhere else.

I basically agree with this opinion, since it has also been a remark 
people make to me about boost (I'm the main boost proponent in my 
office). So here is my proposal:

* First, easy to do, include more examples in the documentation. I've 
verified several times that when they don't want to read and understand 
a whole document, people try to skip to the examples. Just something like :

To build all with VC++7.1 : (after calling the correct VCVARS.bat)
bjam "-sTOOLS=vc-7_1" install

To build only the serialization module with VC++6.0 :
bjam "-sTOOLS=msvc" --with-serialization install

To build only the multithread version vith BC++
bjam "-sTOOLS=borland" "-sBUILD=<threading>multi" install // I'm really 
not sure for this one

* Second, provide a compiled bjam for major platforms directly in the 
distribution (ok, the distribution will be bigger. Is this a problem ?)

* Third, provide some script to add boost to the compiler path (I do not 
know how to do this...)

* Finally, installing boost takes longer than installing VC++... Is 
building from the source such an important point ? Would'nt it be 
possible to provide pre-built libraries for the 3 or 4 main compilers on 
windows with each release ? The whole package, zipped, is 80mb on my VC8.

-- 
Loïc