Re: Can we create boost-config

From: Andrey Semashev (andrey.semashev_at_[hidden])
Date: 2021-09-06 11:52:32

On 9/6/21 2:41 PM, Дмитрий Архипов via Boost wrote:
> пн, 6 сент. 2021 г., 14:03 Sreeraj K via Boost <boost_at_[hidden]>:
> 
>> *[I initialially raised this question in
>> https://github.com/boostorg/boost/issues/548
>> <https://github.com/boostorg/boost/issues/548>, but @mclaw recommended
>> this
>> mailing list.]*
>>
>> Similar to many other packages (eg: curl, krb5, pcre, xml2, xslt etc..),
>> can we also ship boost-config that would provide the installation options ?
>>
>> We can probably start with something like this ?
>>
>> $ /usr/bin/boost-config --help
>> Usage: boost-config [ options ]
>>
>> Options:
>>    --cflags             print compiler options
>>    --ldflags            print linker options
>>    --prefix             print the boost prefix
>>    --version            print the boost version
>>    --help               print this usage summary
>>
>> $ /usr/bin/boost-config --version
>> 1.66.0
>> $ /usr/bin/boost-config --cflags
>> -I/usr/include
>> $ /usr/bin/boost-config --ldflags
>> -L/usr/lib64 -Wl,-R/usr/lib64
>>
> This sounds like a pkg-config package. In fact, several projects moved from

> such custom scripts to pkg-config.

> 

> Anyway, the main problem here is to make the build system (b2) output those

> flags in a parseable manner. If that was implemented, it could be used to

> make pkg-config packages, CMake config modules, etc.

> 

> Another problem is that different boost libraries will require different

> build flags to use them, so you'll actually need e.g. boost-thread-config,

> boost-filesystem-config (or boost-thread.pc and boost-filesystem.pc if

> pkg-config is used).

I agree that pkg-config is the right way. I believe, we're already 
producing CMake scripts for aiding find_package, but that is limited to 
CMake usage.

There's this old ticket:

https://svn.boost.org/trac10/ticket/1094

I'm not sure if there was any real progress since then.