Re: [Boost-users] MinGW Build Issues

From: Jonathan Turkanis (turkanis_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-01-16 15:02:39

Chris Miller wrote:
> On Jan 15, 2008 10:01 PM, Jonathan Turkanis <turkanis_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> I think it's wiser for me to learn how to build it from source,
> however. 

It's not necessary to learn to build bjam from source unless you're 
interested in becoming a Boost.Build developer. I have built bjam from 
source using build.bat many times, but still have no idea how it works, 
and I don't care.

>>> That's not what the build instructions said.  They said to use
>>> build.bat mingw, 'cause that's my toolkit.  It kept trying it with
>>> MSVC for some odd reason.
>> It shouldn't matter which toolset you use to build bjam. The resulting
>> executable will still work with MinGW.
> 
> I thought it was only C that had a binary layout contract or whatever
> they call it.  That's cool, though off topic, how does that work?

bjam is like GNU make; it invokes your build tools repeatedly with 
various command-line arguments. It doesn't matter what compiler compiled 
it. I compile bjam with MSVC but use it to build and test boost with 
about 10 toolsets including two versions of MinGW.

> Should I add MSYS to the PATH as well, or do you think that will be
> necessary?  I have MSYS installed, I'm just not sure.

That's not necessary (and it might confuse things -- not sure).

> I don't have MSVC installed, nor have I ever had it installed on this
> OS, so I wonder why it picked MSVC.

Probably it looked for MinGW in your path, and didn't find it, so it 
tried to build bjam using the most common;y available compiler on Windows.

> Thanks for the help!

np

-- 
Jonathan Turkanis
CodeRage
http://www.coderage.com