Unix build+install

From: John Maddock (john_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-12-06 06:24:49

Rene,

I've just run the install routine on Linux again, and I still think there
are a couple of things that could be improved:

Header file location:

I appreciate why you place these in a "versioned" directory, but the result
is that the headers are not in the users include path, further it's very
hard to see how a configure script could discover their location
auto-magically. Likewise anyone building their project from a makefile
would have to edit all their makefiles etc every time the boost version
number changes. Would it be possible to add:

${boost-install-prefix}/include/boost

as a symlink to the actual install directory
(${boost-install-prefix}/include/boost-${boost_version}/boost)

Library names:

As with the header file location, having versioned libraries is a good idea
in principle, but complicates makefiles no end, because one needs:

-lboost_regex-gcc-1_31

rather than:

-lboost_regex-gcc

or even better:

-lboost_regex

I see two problems with this:

1) I don't see how an autoconf script can discover the right library version
suffix.
2) I don't see how an autoconf script can discover the right compiler
suffix.

Again a symlink would help, certainly for (1), not sure yet about (2).

Is there a rule for symlinks in boost.build already? I've found one for
hardlinks, but not surprisingly for symlinks?

Thanks,

John.