The version in the lib has it's std lib in namespace "std" rather than "_STL", I'm guessing that STLPORT_PATH was setup incorrectly and so the lib build didn't include the STLPort headers. Either that or else __STL_DEBUG was set inconsistently between the two builds (bjam turns it on for debug builds).
John.
Touché. Hadn't looked at resulting VC command-line and indeed, STLPort was not included properly. Only now, after much hair-pulling, inclusion of STLPort headers with <stlport-iostream>off leads me to another perplexing point: C:\boost_1_32_0\boost/shared_ptr.hpp(431) : error C2039: 'basic_ostream' : is not a member of '_STL' followed by a bunch of errors stemming from the absence of basic_ostream. I looked through shared_ptr.hpp's inclusion path for missing references to ostream or somesuch but could find none. (building with <stlport-iostream>on works, but does not achieve what I want) Could it be that my path settings are leading to ostream never being included? Many thanks, jeff poirier Software Designer / Servers Group, VertigoXmedia