I eventually got it working with these commands: C:\boost_1_49_0>b2 toolset=gcc --build-type=complete --prefix=\prefix stage C:\boost_1_49_0>b2 toolset=gcc --prefix=\prefix\ install
This makes sense. Note that you could have skipped the staging step if you want, and could have specified the build directory explicitly. Try typing b2 --help for a list of command line options. For completeness here's what I did to build boost 1.53 from the MSYS shell using MinGW ($ indicates a shell command, # indicates a comment): $ cd BOOST_ROOT $ bootstrap.sh mingw --prefix=H:/MinGW-libs # H:/MinGW-libs is where I chose to put all of my nonstandard libs for MinGW. # If you do this you have to make sure you somehow tell gcc how to find these libs, # since they aren't the instandard search paths. # I then edited project-config.jam to look like this: if ! mingw in [ feature.values <toolset> ] { using gcc ; } # I don't know why this works but it does. I found this somewhere on stackoverflow $ b2 --build-dir=H:/boost/msys-build --with-regex link=static runtime-link=shared install This put all of the build files (.o file etc) in H:\boost\msys-build, but installed the actual libs and headers to H:\MinGW-libs. This is because the options specified when you invoke bootstrap.sh (and boostrap.bat) control what goes into project-config.jam, which in turn determines where things are built/installed/etc when you run b2. Note that you can override these options when you invoke b2. Either way works.
Thank you for your help.
yay! My first ever useful response to a mailing list :) Regards, kjoppy