Re: [boost] [system] Why is this not header-only?

From: Jeff Garland (jeff_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-04-03 17:37:37

Sohail Somani wrote:
>> [mailto:boost-bounces_at_[hidden]] On Behalf Of Jeff Garland
>>
>> Sohail Somani wrote:
>>
>>> Oh come on guys, aren't we just getting silly? To avoid 
>> what? Adding cpp
>>> files to the build?
>> Yeah, actually.  Here's a response to your earlier mail:
> 
> Sorry I must have missed it.

No, I wrote it and then never sent it :-)

> I'm going to say that people have problems building boost with bjam
> unless you can prove otherwise. In my opinion, bjam is the blocker. Not
> the fact that you have to build some files. Boost.Config is the key to
> making it easy.

Nope, but realize, it's not just bjam -- it's more complicated than that. 
That might have actually compiled boost.  At a minimum, though they have to 
pick the right lib version: debug-multithread, release-nomulththread, etc -- 
so there's a bit of work there.

date-time is a bit special in that it turns out you can use most of it as 
header only.  So they start doing that, and then they call to_simple_string 
and suddenly their code won't link.  They never bothered to read the docs that 
explain it.  But I understand -- I hate to read the docs too when I'm learning 
a new library.

> Agreed. I don't see why "add boost/libs/<lib>/src/*.cpp to your 'visual
> studio project'" is harder than export
> PYTHONPATH=/path/to/my/fancy/new/lib:$PYTHONPATH. Indeed, on Windows,
> this is even more annoying.
> 
> If the policy is: *Don't* depend on bjam for your build, and I've found
> most separately compiled Boost libraries *don't* do this, then add
> src/*.cpp to your build is the better solution.

I"m a little confused.  The official build system is bjam for all libs, tests, 
examples.  Some libs provide other options.  As you say, it's not that hard in 
some IDE's to include the files into your own library, but it's not really 
that hard to run bjam either.  My only point is that it's harder and it's 
off-task.

> Am I the only one on this list who thinks this way (or is willing to
> speak up about it)? I've seen developers refuse to work on a library
> until they've factored it into appropriate separately compiled units.

I'm completely lost what you mean now...

Jeff