[boost] Best Practices Question: Building, Installing, and Using Boost in Corporate Environments

From: Christopher Woods (cwoods_eol_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-11-20 10:25:47

Hello!

I'm rather new to Boost and I'm thinking about starting
to use the libraries in some of our software development but I'm a bit
lost as to how best to bring Boost into our environment.  I'm looking
for any information, tips, best practices, etc... on how to properly
incorporate Boost in the environment without overwhelming the other
developers.

Some information that may be of help in answering my questions:

- We use MSVC 6.5 (as Boost defines it), MSVC 7.1, and MSVC 8.0
depending on the project.  (There has never been any great push to port
existing and legacy projects to the newer compilers I'm afraid.)


- Depending on the project between 1 and 3 developers are involved.


- I work solo on most of my projects, however some of the
more common aspects of my code are reused in other related projects
maintained by other developers.  If I start using Boost in these areas
then they will need it on their machines as well...


Some starter questions:
1) Is it generally advisable to store a
copy of Boost in a local corporate repository so that all developers
are using the same revision of the libraries?  Or do you just
let/instruct users grab the latest official release from Boost.org? 
(If repository is recommended then do you push up just the source,
source + compiled, or just the staged files?)

2) How do you deal
with bugs found in or enhancements to the various libraries between
major release versions?  (I guess this depends greatly upon how you
answer the previous question.)

3) Do you build Boost once for
all toolsets and have developers copy the staged files to their local
machines?  Or is each developer responsible for building the libraries
themselves?  (I realize that a majority of the libraries are headers
only but there is a fair number of libraries included that need to be
compiled as well.)

4) How do Service Packs and Platform SDK
 updates affect the built libraries?  Should the libraries be rebuilt any time these change?

I'm
sure there are a lot more questions - I just have to have somewhere to
start on the path.  Obviously, there are companies out there that are
using Boost
within their environment and so I'd love to gain insight from their
experiences and approaches.  Any other related information that could
be provided would be most certainly welcomed as well.

Thank you in advance,

-Chris

PS
- Perhaps in the end this information will prove to be sufficient in nature to
warrant creating a guide/FAQ for the new user(s) wishing to bring Boost
into their corporate environs.  Or maybe there is one already and I
just missed it completely?


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