Re: is is possible to downsize the boost installation folder

From: Christian Mazakas (christian.mazakas_at_[hidden])
Date: 2025-04-10 18:06:49

On Thu, Apr 10, 2025 at 10:27 AM Dennis Luehring via Boost <
boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> im building boost 1.87 and i only need thread+asio
>
> building:
>
> cd /home/test
> wget https://archives.boost.io/release/1.87.0/source/boost_1_87_0.tar.bz2
> tar -xf boost_1_87_0.tar.bz2
> cd boost_1_87_0
> ./bootstrap.sh --prefix=/home/test/boost_1_87_0_installed
> ./b2 variant=release --with-thread install
>
> the resulting install folder
>
> /home/test/boost_1_87_0_installed
>    lib folder is ~500 KB
>    include is ~142 MB
>
> is it possible to only have the needed library includes in the include
> folder?
>

One thing is to use vcpkg and just depend on boost-thread and boost-asio.
This will automatically do all the dependency resolution for you.

The other is to use the CMake build and do something like this:

    cd boost-root
    mkdir _build
    cd _build
    cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=_install
-DBOOST_INCLUDE_LIBRARIES="thread;asio"
    cmake --build . --target install -j12

Note: you're still going to be installing a good amount of libraries here
but this at least gives you the most minimal install possible.

- Christian