"Reece Dunn" <msclrhd@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:BAY101-F27D3D4829B2FDF38C3BA41A00F0@phx.gbl... [snip]
Basically, I'd add a target after "install" that could grab the source and built libraries and feed those files into the installer script, creating a single installer output file (say, "boost_1.32.msi"). Then the boost maintainers could publish just that file on the web.
The problem is that the library files generated come to around 520Mb per toolset. Therefore, packaging the *.lib files becomes unrealistic (especially with the countless variations of gcc: is gcc-3.3 version 3.3.0, 3.3.1, ...?)
The installer should: * extract the current Boost distribution files; * setup any environment variables; * build bjam; * build the libraries for the selected compilers/versions, noting where to install to, whether Python is supported, etc.; * optionally configure your favorite IDE to find the requested headers and library files.
Agreed for the most part. But wouldn't including a pre-built bjam executable be better? After all, it's not that big a download...
Well .. the commercial installers take care of a lot of common issues that occur, adding a layer of reliability and tested code for the common tasks of installing files, editing paths, registry, and displaying a familar user interface. Are you really sure you'd want to stray off the beaten path here?
Therefore using a commercial installer would be a good thing. The question is does that installer support executing command lines (to build the Boost files) and can you optionally process that to provide a nice UI/progress for the average user who is going to be daunted by the masses of output generated.
You can run just about anything from an installer. My main reason for not using one would that it's not that easy to come back to it and say you want to build another target which you didn't the first time around. And that for Windows Installer packages, the 2nd time around you run a package with the exact same ProductID, you get into maintenance mode (repair/uninstall/reinstall) and well, having no experience with worknig around that, I thought it'd be easier to do a separate tool.
The alternative would be to provide Unix and Windows scripts to simplify the build/install process to something like:
install-boost c:/boost-1.32 vc-7_1
Reece Haston Dunn Software Engineer, Sophos
Web: www.sophos.com Sophos - protecting businesses against viruses and spam
Pablo Aguilar