[Boost-users] Re: Selection scheme for boost libraries

From: Rene Rivera (grafik.list_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-04-19 10:11:26

Uli Tuerk wrote:
> Hi all!
> 
> I have a very basic problem with the boost libraries:
> 
> I used bjam to build all boost libraries for Linux (using "gcc" as
> toolset and the call 'bjam "-sTOOLS=gcc" install').
> 
> All went fine, however I wanted to do the regression tests for boost_regex
> using the gcc.mak Makefile
>  in <boost_main>/libs/regex/test/regress
> which uses "-lboost_regex" for linking.
> The linker reported an error because there is no "libboost_regex.so" in my
> lib folder unless I created a link with this name to one of the various
> versions of libboost_regex.
> A comment for these Makefiles would be helpful for the case when having
> build all with bjam. When compiling the regex part alone, the library is
> created in build/gcc with the correct name (libboost_regex.so).

I sounds like the makefile should be updated to handle the different 
built variants.

> I'm new to C++, so maybe I haven't got the point with the sophisticated
> naming scheme of the libraries, but: for the library
> "libboost_regex-gcc-mt-d-1_31.so" e.g. are the tool specifier ("gcc")
> and the version ("1_31") really necessary for a platform using version
> numbering of the libraries anyway in the ".so" extension?

1. Not all operating systems support internal library versioning. And 
when they do, you still need a version number on the filename to allow 
multiple versions of the same library to coexist.

2. Some developers, most Boost developers, have many compilers installed 
so the toolset tag is needed so we can work with them all without 
collisions..

> OK, there are still the categories with/without debug and with/without
> threading. How would you guys select the type of library? In the Makefile?

It depends on what the makefile wants. Looking at that makefile I see 
that it uses both debug and release variants, so you need both of those. 
And looking at the libs/regex/build/gcc.mak would suggest that only the 
single-threaded variants are use.

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