From: boost-users-bounces@lists.boost.org [mailto:boost-users-bounces@lists.boost.org] On Behalf Of Totally Anonymous Sent: July-28-12 10:37 PM To: boost-users@lists.boost.org Subject: Re: [Boost-users] Can I copy/paste Boost source code and compile directly into my application?
I don't have an installer, just a fairly simple Makefile to build the executable from my source code. So I'd like to just add the appropriate targets to the Makefile to compile&link whatever I need to from Boost. I don't want my users to have to 'apt-get install' anything else... Am I wrong? ? Thx
I should add that I would like to support Linux/OSX/Cygwin...
So, basically, you want to be able to distribute the source code so that anyone on any Linux distro or on Cygwin can build it. If the user is comfortable with building such an application, then they will have no problem using, say, YaST on Suse or apt-get on Ubuntu to install boost, or even to go to the boost website and download, build and install it themselves. I would not want to be cherry-picking bits and pieces out of boost code: that is so much harder than just using it. If I were in your place, I would just list boost as a pre-requisite and let the user worry about satisfying that requirement. If I were a little masochistic, I would set up virtual machines for every supported platform and built it on each, and then package it all up into a form that the native installers (YaST or apt-get or one of the others) can install. If I were in the business of distributing software for the Linux world, I would go the old reliable route of distributing an archive and can be unpacked, and then the process of building would be the usual sequence of './configure', make, 'make check' and 'make install'. You can go even simpler and just provide a makefile, but that requires you to tell the user what libraries have to be installed, and then leave it to the user to install them before trying to build your program. my $0.03 ;-) Cheers Ted