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

On Jan 30, 2006, at 5:31 PM, David Abrahams wrote:

Steve Byan writes:

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On Jan 30, 2006, at 11:17 AM, David Abrahams wrote:

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What do you wish someone had explained to you?

It would be nice to update the installation documentation to point out that at least the latest distribution includes bjam, so one doesn't need to download it separately,

If you mean the latest release of Boost, then it has always included the bjam sources, but has never included a bjam executable. I think it's pretty clear from the docs that the sources for bjam are part of the Boost release, isn't it?

Not to me :-)

The need to build a tool just to be able to build boost was seen as anathema to many people (different programming cultures have different needs), so the Getting Started guide strongly encouraged downloading a prebuilt bjam executable.

I didn't want to depend on a pre-built executable in my project, so I downloaded the source rather than a pre-built executable, built and installed bjam, and then discovered that it was already included in the Boost distribution and had a pre-packaged "build bjam" configure script, and moreover that the makefiles auto-generated by the configure script use the absolute path to the built bjam rather than the one in my path. This was a surprise to me; maybe I missed something in the Getting Started.

If you're talking about some distribution of Boost packaged for installation on, say, Debian or RedHat, then those are not prepared by the Boost developers and historically we have taken no responsibility for their contents.

No, no, I was just surprised that the bjam source was part of the Boost distribution and that the configure-generated makefile did not make use of any bjam in my path but instead hard-coded the path to the executable built out of the distribution.

That actually *ought* to be made clear in our docs and we ought to coordinate with the maintainers of those distros to make sure there are appropriate instructions for their users on our website. I'll definitely mention that in my talk.

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and that the config script in at least the latest distribution will build bjam and create makefiles which will invoke the built bjam executable to build and install Boost.

Doc patches are always welcome. My improvements will probably come in the form of an article.

I'll look forward to it.

I'll certainly mention in my talk that there's a configure script for those who are comfortable with

./configure && make && make install

Thanks for your feedback.

Thank you for your work on Boost. Regards, -Steve -------- Steve Byan Software Architect Egenera, Inc. 165 Forest Street Marlboro, MA 01752 (508) 858-3125