Unfortunately some libraries are not header only and there is easy way to tell which libraries require separate compilation / linking steps and which don't. I would very much like a separate release which only contained header only libraries.
Don't you think assembling a separate release of boost just so you can tell which libraries need to be compiled is a bit of a heavyweight approach? Seems to me a little documentation should be sufficient.
If there are a significant number of advanced users who, like myself, only use the header-only libraries, it would mean that there would be an overall saving of bandwidth. This also would include people doing casual downloads, such as curious newbies. So in that case I would not consider it to be a heavyweight approach, unless creating such a release would be a substantial amount of work for the release manager. This release I am proposing could alos be promoted as a lightweight release without documentation or tests. Boost-lite? Christopher Diggins http://www.cdiggins.com