Re: [Boost-build] discovering libraries with boost at build time

Subject: Re: [Boost-build] discovering libraries with boost at build time
From: Artyom (artyomtnk_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-07-09 10:11:29

> > I still do not support  BBv2 for Boost.Locale even in the release for review
> > for one  simple
> > reason - there is no even way to do something like find_library,  or
> > find_path.
> 
> exactly which libraries you need to  search?

I need to search for ICU, and it does not supported by pkg-config and
pkg-config is not an option for "Native Windows" developers (a.k.a. MSVC users).

Before you mention that Boost.Regex uses ICU, it indeed uses it but:

- If fails to find correct library under MSVC debug builds and links with 
release onces.

  This is actually a bug. But unlike for Boost.Regex where ICU is totally 
optional, for Boost.Locale
  it is quite central part.

- It searchs for library manually, I mean it looks for a file like libicuuc.so 
or cygicuuc.dll or 

  libicuuc.dll.a manually - something that generally implemented by **all** 
build system such as
  it knows how to find generic library by generic compiler (and it is 
implemented 

  for each OS/platform/compiler).

  So I don't want to write entrire code once again if I would want to use iconv 
(as it much
  faster then uconv)...

> 
> I am  not too familiar with cmake but AFAIK, every project needs to ship cmake 

> files in its installation so that cmake can discover the correct build 
> settings. pkgconfig supports similar goals and is already there on most  linux 

> installs and supported by many libraries.
> 
> Of course, that does  not cover windows situation at all.

But the point of build system is not to target one OS or most popular (and 
believe me if I
would not support Windows my life would be much easier).

Artyom