I'm having problems figure out what the "Build and Install" section on http://www.boost.org/more/getting_started.html means.
This has always been very confusing to me. In the past I've just horsed around until it started to worked and then went on with what I was trying to do. Now I'm augmenting the jam files for serialization build and testing and want to get this right. I read this section and the following questions come to mind: 4) "The default build and install attempts to build all available libraries and install to default locations the libraries and Boost header files. On Unix systems the default install location is "/usr/local", and on Windows systems the default is "C:\Boost". Within those directories libraries are installed to the "lib" subdirectory, and headers to an "include/boost-1_31" subdirectory, the version will reflect the distribution you are installing." This sounds like it means it creates for me a whole new directory structure with all the boost includes all over again. In fact that what I think it does. When I first read this it makes no sense to me as I would never occur to me why anyone would want to do this since its just a copy of what I just downloaded and unzipped. One thing I seem to get with the default is a ./bin/boost/... directory with a deep hierarchy with all the libraries. This is something I would never expect from reading the above. 5) "Invoke the build system, specifying the toolset(s) you wish to use, to build and install. For example for GNU/GCC. bjam "-sTOOLS=gcc" install " again I'm mystified why anyone would want to do what I think this does. "Or if you are interested only in the built libraries you can have them built and collected to a common directory without installation. bjam "-sTOOLS=gcc" stage " This seems more in line with what I would expect most people would want. The terms install, and stage, though defined (sort of) are confusing to me. --libdir= --stagedir= Now I'm confused about the difference between the lib directory and stage directory. I sort of surmise that the he lib directory is the root of the deep tree that has branches for all the different variants. But that's not clear to me. "Results" "The results of building come in to forms: .." "to" should be speed "two" I think the 1_31 should be changed to 1_32 "Automatic Linking on Windows" "I believe "Serialisation" should be "Serialization", better double check though - I'm an atrocious speller. There needs to be a separate section about how to use boost libraries in one's own projects. The section "Automatic Linking on Windows" should be moved to that section. There are other issues as well. When one uses the dll, the directory including the DLL has to be in the path. There are issues when trying to use with theVC IDE. I would also like to a section called "Testing your installation" This would run the regression testing system from the top level on the user's system. I believe that the current regression testing system isn't suitable for this as it depends on python - which might not be installed. I would like to see an upgraded version of the original system which uses compiler_status - which would automatically be built as part of the installation process. (I've made changes to my personal version of compiler_status so that it shows results for all the variants rather then just the "first" one). That is, each user could test his installation on his his system as soon as it is installed. This would save alot of grief from users who don't get the install right - and its easy to get wrong. Robert Ramey ------------------------------------------------------- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest & candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://productguide.itmanagersjournal.com/ _______________________________________________ Boost-docs mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe and other administrative requests: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/boost-docs
