[Boost-users] Are BOOST_BUILD_PATH && BOOST_ROOT necessary?

From: Steven T. Hatton (hattons_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-09-02 23:05:38

>From reading the documentation on boost.org, I have gotten the impression I 
don't need to set $BOOST_BUILD_PATH and $BOOST_ROOT.  I'm more than a little 
confused about how I should use the boost libraries.  Part of this comes from 
the fact that it is not clear to me exactly where the demarkation is between 
using the build system to build boost, and using it to build my own programs.  
Some of my confusion comes from the appearant change in configuration 
requirements described in the documentation.  It is suggested I don't need 
the environment variable used with earlier releases.  One of these variables 
is $BOOST_ROOT, which the documentation used as an example of how to build 
boost.  That example was exactly what I successfully (I believe) build the 
libraries with.

I'm using SuSE Linux 9.1 on a P4 box.  Some basic questions are these:

When I downloaded and built boost, I first fetched the source for bjam. This 
is the name of the file I downloaded: boost-jam-3.1.10.tgz  It compiled quite 
nicely, and I copied the resulting bjam  jam  mkjambase and  yyacc to a 
location in my path.  Are there anything other things such as configuration 
files I need to reside with the binary executables?  Are there necessary 
configuration file that I need to have visible to these programs, even if 
they are not colocated?

I then build boost with the command: 
bjam  --prefix=$BOOST_ROOT "-sTOOLS=gcc" install
after setting my BOOST_ROOT the way I wanted it.  That resulted in two 
directories being placed in $BOOST_ROOT/ one is called $BOOST_ROOT/include/ 
the other is called $BOOST_ROOT/lib/.  Under $BOOST_ROOT/include/ I have 
<path>/boost-1_31/boost/ which contains dozens of header files.  I added 
$BOOST_ROOT/include/boost-1_31 to my $INCLUDE_PATH, and 
$BOOST_ROOT/lib to my $LIBRARY_PATH  and $LD_LIBRARY_PATH variables.  Is this 
the correct way to configure my system to use boost?

Is there anything else I need to do in order to compile my programs against 
the boost headers and libraries?  

Will the boost libraries work as well as other, comperable libraries using 
autotools rather than bjam?  Are there any special accommodations I need to 
make in order to use boost with the gnu build tools?  

Do I need to do anything special to use boost with bjam that does not involve 
placing files in my current project directories?  For example, do I need to 
provide a global configuration file of some kind?  Is it a preferred option, 
even if not strictly required?

There is much remaining in the source directory where I compiled boost.  Is 
that something I need to also put in an accessible place on my system?  If 
so, what so I need to put where, and how to I modify my environment variable 
to facilitate its use?

-- 
Regards,
Steven