[Boost-users] Boost libraries on MacOS X: libboost_foo.dylib vs libboost_foo-mt.dylib (+)

Subject: [Boost-users] Boost libraries on MacOS X: libboost_foo.dylib vs libboost_foo-mt.dylib (+)
From: Nick Zavaritsky (mejedi_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-05-12 06:39:23

Hi all!

Please enlighten me what is the difference between libboost_foo.dylib and libboost_foo-mt.dylib?
I guess -mt naming convention originates from Windows which once had both signle- and multithreaded CRT (-mt).
However there is neither a single-threaded CRT nor a single-threaded program on Mac, thanks to GCD.
Is there any use for non-MT libboost_foo.dylib or not?

And let me squeeze another vaguely related question in the same letter.

Are Boost debug and normal library variants binary-compatible?
The reason I am curious is because Mac dynamic library linker (dyld) has a promising feature to load a different library variant without program recompilation.
This feature is activated through the environment variable DYLD_IMAGE_SUFFIX.
Ex: setting DYLD_IMAGE_SUFFIX=_debug will result in dyld attempting to load libfoo_debug.dylib instead of libfoo.dylib.

Thanks in advance.