Re: [boost] Build: Trying to get Boost.Build to see my OpenSSL on Windows

Subject: Re: [boost] Build: Trying to get Boost.Build to see my OpenSSL on Windows
From: Peter Dimov (lists_at_[hidden])
Date: 2016-10-01 13:30:43

Steven Watanabe wrote:
> > That's incredibly inconvenient... surely this is not the recommended 
> > approach to finding library dependencies...
>
>
> No it isn't.  This is really a workaround for the user when the author of 
> the Jamfile decided to be lazy.
...
> A better way is to create a module like tools/zlib.jam.

Is it really fair to blame the author of the Jamfile for the lack of 
tools/ssl.jam?

Besides, a module is probably best when we want to support building the 
library from source, but OpenSSL is pretty hard to build (and, I think, 
CMake based), so I doubt that anyone would volunteer to translate its build 
script (or, for extra fun, the build scripts for each of its releases).

I don't think that the recommended approach for finding an arbitrary 
preinstalled library should be "write a module".

By looking around, I can deduce that ac.check-library was probably intended 
to be the way to do that, but it doesn't appear to be documented.

BTW libtiff.jam and libjpeg.jam look for ZLIB_SOURCE. I assume this is a 
typo, because libpng.jam looks for LIBONG_SOURCE.

BTW2, the Asio example Jamfile does not do

    lib ssl ;

under Windows. It does

    lib ssl : : <name>ssleay32 ;
    lib crypto : : <name>libeay32  ;