Re: [Boost-users] Newbie: Boost for Windows"

From: Dave Compton (abcdave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-03-24 21:04:29

Hi John,

    I've been working in Windows for several months in exactly the 
manner you describe.  It works fine but it took a while to figure out 
how to set things up.  Here is what works:

0) Get/install Cygwin:  full install - use unix style linefeeds.
1) Get/install MingGW:  MinGW-5.0.2.exe
2) Get/unpack  Boost: boost_1_33_0.tar.bz2 - boost_1_33_1 has a few 
build failures but boost_1_33_0 compiles cleanly.
3) Open Cygwin terminal and added MinGW/bin to path
4) cd to boost_1_33_0/tools/build/jam_scr
5) use the windows cmd "shell" to build bjam for mingw as follows: "cmd 
/C build.bat mingw"
6) Add <boostDir>/boost_1_33_0/tools/build/jam_src/bin.ntx86 to your 
path to get bjam
7) Build boost: bjam "-sTOOLS=mingw" --prefix=<boostInstallDir> install 
 > build.res 2>&1

The format for <boostInstallDir> should be something like 
c:/boost/boost_1_3_0/install .  Use forward slashes and a dos style 
directory name like "c:"

When compiling, use '-I<boostInstallDir>/include/boost-1_33' to get the 
boost include files.

When linking, use '-L<boostInstallDir>/lib to get the boost libraries.

At runtime, if you link with shared libraries, you will need to have 
c:\MinGW\bin and <boostInstallDir>\lib in your PATH environment 
variable.  In this case slashes should be backslashes.  Also, I ran into 
problems when the path environment variable contained directories from 
different disks so it makes life easier if you put you mingw 
installation on the same disk as your boost installation.

- Dave