Re: [boost] [1.35] what gets built and installed?

From: dherring_at_[hidden]
Date: 2007-12-19 15:01:26

On Wed, 19 Dec 2007, Vladimir Prus wrote:
> John Maddock wrote:
>> Rene Rivera wrote:
>>> John Maddock wrote:
>>>> If I do a:
>>>>
>>>> bjam stage --toolset=msvc-8.0 --with-regex
>>>>
>>>> Then with 1.35 I don't get any static libraries built, just the
>>>> dll's.  Was this a deliberate change somewhere?  It's a problem
>>>> because the default for auto-linking is to look for static rather
>>>> than dynamic libraries.
>>>
>>> Yes, it was intentional
>>> <http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel/168552>. We also
>>> discussed it at one point
>>> <http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel/166847>. I guess
>>> we
>>> should switch autolink to default to the dynamic libs?
>>
...
>> If the aim is to reduce the number of variants built, then I would
>> suggest:
>>
>> Dymanic *and* static lib, as Release, multithreaded, dynamic runtime
>> single build on Unix variants (2 build variants).
>
> I'd be opposed to this. How many popular projects can you name,
> that build two variants on Linux?

Qt does something clever on Linux.  Their installed libs look like
lrwxrwxrwx       17 libQtGui.so -> libQtGui.so.4.3.1
lrwxrwxrwx       17 libQtGui.so.4 -> libQtGui.so.4.3.1
lrwxrwxrwx       17 libQtGui.so.4.3 -> libQtGui.so.4.3.1
-rwxr-xr-x  8227640 libQtGui.so.4.3.1
-rw-r--r-- 67812225 libQtGui.so.4.3.1.debug

libQtGui.so.4.3.1 contains a special ELF section, .gnu_debuglink, that 
points the debugger to libQtGui.so.4.3.1.debug.  This way they can install 
a "multithreaded release variant", but it points gdb to a file with all 
the Dwarf information needed for a "debug variant".  Deleting that .debug 
file won't hurt people who don't use the debugger.

I haven't taken the time to figure out how they build this, but it looks 
like a worthwhile trick.

- Daniel