Re: [jamboost] How to install only subset of header files?

From: Michael Stevens (mail_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-05-23 10:57:09

On Monday 23 May 2005 09:43, Marcel Loose wrote:
> Hi Victor,
>
> The "problem" is that I'm not doing active development on Boost. We are
> using *some* Boost libraries in our project. Now I don't want to
> "litter" our project environment (even with 3rd party software) with
> code that we don't use. I'm among the group of people who believe that
> "less is better"; or to paraphrase Stroustrup: "You don't pay for what
> you don't use". That was the reason for me asking this question.

Agreed stripping down the header files is occassionally useful. I ship source 
code that relies on Boost to a customer. The most important 
thing for me is to avoid any versioning problems. Therefore I ship my code 
with a stripped down set of necessary Boost headers.

I have no automatic solution, but the manual approach is quick an effective.
I simply deleted all the header files and directories that seemed obviously 
unrelated. Compilation then failed with a few header not found. I put these 
back step by step. Only took 5 minutes to complete the cycle!

> Besides, IMHO it makes sense to provide an option to only install those
> header files that you actually use. Why would you only provide an option
> to install *some* object libraries, without providing the option to only
> install the headers associated with those libraries?

I think there are many barriers to implementing this successfully. From the 
C++ perspective as soon as you place files in a location so they can be found 
with #include then they have been "installed".

I think what you are asking for is a list of header files that a library 
exports. There is no automatic way that BB can determine this. BB can 
determine what header files are required internally for a given build, but 
not which would be required externally.

Therefore a librarys the Jamfiles would require further extension to list the 
exported headers. This would seem like a lot of complexity for little gain. I 
must admit however to feeling that the inclusion of install information into 
BBv2 has rather detracted from it's elligence for me. The level of support 
effort required to cover the multitude of installation scenarios seems to me 
to be disproportionate!

All the best,
Michael