Re: [Boost-users] Getting started with Boost: what did you need toknow?

From: John Maddock (john_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-02-07 05:20:46

>> If you run bcp, every library shows up as depending on test and mpl
>
> I don't think so.  When I tried it yesterday there was no mention of
> Boost.Test headers in the Boost.Parameter dependency report.

It depends how you run it: basically it scans files for file dependencies 
so:

If you pass it a list of *library names* to scan, and those libraries have 
tests that depend on "whatever" (Boost.Test etc) then you get a very fat 
dependency graph.  However if you're more disciminating and pass the name of 
the headers you use, then you get a list of dependencies for those headers, 
for example:

bcp --list regex     => Big fat list including Boost.Test and Boost.Thread
bcp --list regex.hpp => Slimline list, just what the headers and source 
depend on.
bcp --scan --list myfile.cpp => Whatever Boost headers/source myfile.cpp 
depends on.

And yes this is all in the docs :-)

Also don't forget that the output from bcp is made more verbose by the need 
to create a dependency chart that works for any compiler: your specific 
compiler may need only a fraction of what bcp reports, in some cases anyway.

Someone asked about producing a library dependency chart: there are two 
problems with that:

There are many libraries that depend on just one or two files in otherwise 
quite large libraries such as MPL, Preprocessor, Type Traits etc.  Do these 
depend on those libraries?

It's quite hard to map some header files (those direcly in boost/) to 
library names: we could make a manual list to do the job, but it would be a 
non-stop job keeping it up to date.

What I will investigate though is collapsing the output from bcp --list so 
that

boost/foo/*  all map to a single entry boost/foo
libs/foo/* all map  to a single entry libs/foo

which would cut down the list output a lot.

John.