Re: [Boost-users] Re: boost on Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther)

From: Scott Lamb (slamb_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-01-13 17:50:03

Sebastian Orfino wrote:
> I am having problems too trying to build the threads lib, and it fails due
> to an unrecognized -shared option passed to the linker and as far as i can
> see, there is no a thread static library. Then I ran bjam "-sTools=darwin
> cwpro8" in the boost root directory and i only got static library builds.
> All the dynamic library builds failed due to this -shared option passed to
> the linker. So what is the flag that the build system should use instead of
> -shared ?

I've run into this same problem. I haven't bothered to get it to build 
the dynamic libs, but maybe this info will help:

On OS X, things are a bit different than the rest of the world. It has 
three different kinds of libraries to Linux's two:

A static library is a ".a", just as under Linux.

On Linux, a dynamic library is a ".so". On OS X, there are two different 
kinds:

- A dynamic _linking_ library (the kind you probably want here) is a 
.dylib. (The kind you can link to with -lboost_XXX.) I think you want 
"-dynamiclib" instead of "-shared" to make one of these.

- A dynamic _loading_ library (for modules loaded through dlopen() and 
friends) is a .so. (I'm not sure if any part of boost uses these or not.)

Plus, libraries can be packaged into bundles or frameworks. There's a 
specific directory structure for those, and the rpath needs to be set up 
in a specific (weird) way...something like ../@executable_name IIRC. 
That's the most "OS X"y way to do things, I guess.

Also, you specify the rpath a little differently. Under Linux, you'd 
specify it to the gcc link stage with -Wl,--rpath=blah ("-Wl," being an 
argument that passes an argument through to ld.) Under OS X, you'd 
specify it with --rpath=blah (no "-Wl,"; the rpath argument being to gcc 
itself, not to ld.)

Also, apparently there's a boost-build mailing list (or similar; I've 
forgotten the exact name) for the boost jam build tool. You probably 
would have better luck asking about this there.

Good luck.

Scott Lamb