Esben Mose Hansen wrote:
On Wednesday 11 March 2009 11:54:24 François Mauger wrote:
As a programmer under Unix-like systems, I really appreciate when a library (say `mylib') provides some `mylib-config' script that helps its users to build compiler flags. Several industrial strength libraries have such a tool: GSL, MySQL and, in the field of particle physics software I work: CLHEP, ROOT, CERNLIB...
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So I have a few questions: - Is there such a script hidden in the Boost source tree? I am not an expert in Boost, but I do not believe there is such a script, or even a pkg-config file. From the archives, the post
http://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2007/02/116513.php
which is essentially identical to yours, received no replies. It seems most people use either the GNU autotools or the CMake build system to automatically find and use Boost headers and libraries. Of these, CMake is what I would recommend, unless you plan to deploy or compile on obscure Unix platforms. CMake provides the FindBoost.cmake, which in recent versions is quite decent.
- If not, is there any plan to provide one?
Not that I can see. It is not so easy to do as it first appears, though. Essentially, you would need to generate a pkg-config file containing the base include for boost, the path to the library install dir and the names of all the relevant libraries for the boost installation. However * such a file would need to be generated by the build system ** The build system in Boost is the little-known or used bjam system.
There's no "bjam system". The build tool used by C++ Boost is called Boost.Build. - Volodya