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From: Doug Gregor (doug.gregor_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-05-22 12:24:46


On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 11:26 AM, Beman Dawes <bdawes_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> I'm overwhelmed! This is unbelievably slick, better than a lot of software
> installs that have been around for years!
>
> Possible issues:
>
> 1) Would it be better if the default install location leaf folder was
> "Boost-1.35.0"? I'm inclined to think so.

Sure, we can do that.

> 2) It should be possible to globally in one place set the default for what
> library builds (shared/static, debug/release) should be installed. I'm
> thinking that wanting to specify that on library by library basis is
> unusual, and the more libraries we add the longer and more mistake prone
> that gets.

The BoostPro installer has this feature. I'll see how we can get this
integrated into the

> 3) My intuition is that four libraries (shared+static) * (debug+release) is
> enough choices, and more than that just gets confusing. What do others
> think?

I think I agree. In general, I would really like us to limit the
number of binaries we build and ship for each platform, to get down to
the binaries that really matter for users. Do people really use the
single-threaded libraries on Windows? Probably not.

>> - If we put information about each library into CMake, e.g., the
>> description, authors, maintainers, etc., that can be displayed when
>> the user's mouse hovers over that library's component in the
>> installer, e.g.,
>> The Boost.Filesystem Library
>>
>> Portable facilities to query and manipulate paths, files, and
>> directories.
>>
>> Author: Beman Dawes <e-mail address>
>
> That would be a nice touch if it isn't too difficult.

Tedious, but not difficult. Most of the effort just going into copying
the descriptions from the web page over to something that CMake can
grok.

>> - We can add different "installation types" that provide a
>> pre-selected set of components. For example, "Complete" (everything),
>> "Runtime" (shared libraries only), "Sources" (headers+sources), etc.
>
> Ah! That would probably take care of issue (2) above.

Maybe, maybe not. We'll find out once this is implemented :)

> Thanks for all your work on this!

We'll plan to build these installers for the next Boost release.

  - Doug


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