Robert Jones wrote:

I have Boost installed as part of my Fedora13/64-bit system, at Boost 1.41. I now want install Boost 1.45, but need to keep the original around for backwards compatibility issues, so I'm putting my 1.45 build somewhere else, and and I want it look as much like the original 1.41 build as possible, but be 1.45.

So I built with this command

...

./bjam --prefix=/usr/local/boost_1_45_0 threading=single --runtime-link=shared --link=shared --layout=tagged install

You should remove "--" in front of "runtime-link" and "link"...

then listing all the Boost regex (regex chosen at random) I find

...

find /usr -name 'libboost_regex*'

187532 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 24 Sep 21 16:25 /usr/lib64/libboost_regex.so -> libboost_regex.so.1.41.0 142821 972 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 994792 Jun 4 2010 /usr/lib64/libboost_regex.so.1.41.0 540038 2356 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2410606 Jan 11 11:56 /usr/local/boost_1_45_0/lib/libboost_regex.a 540030 1132 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1156757 Jan 11 11:55 /usr/local/boost_1_45_0/lib/libboost_regex.so.1.45.0 540031 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 24 Jan 11 11:55 /usr/local/boost_1_45_0/lib/libboost_regex.so -> libboost_regex.so.1.45.0

which seems to show an extra .a compared to my Fedora 'default' installation.

... and that should make the .a file (which is link=static) to not be generated.

How come?

See above.

Do I need it?

I don't know. This surely depends on your needs.

Can I determine the bjam flags that Fedora used originally?

Presumably, by obtaining src RPM and examining the spec file. - Volodya