Robert Mathews wrote:
"Reece Dunn" <msclrhd@hotmail.com> wrote in message
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, ...?)
Did you see my other post where I addressed that? I'll paste it in here for convenience, sorry if the duplication annoys. What do you think?
I did see it, I just hadn't had chance to reply (the other install-related thread is getting large and I do have a day job :)).
[snip] When I compress my directory, I get a 90% reduction in size - more like 70MB. But that's still too large. However, a single compile model - ie, single threaded (debug+release) - takes only 4.6MB, which is easily downloadable.
And all programming shops I've been to pick a particular compiler, programming model, and then stick with it, so the following idea should work:
But what about your curious semi-knowledgeable user who downloads GCC from the website as binaries, or selects one from cygwin. You can't say Boost supports installing gcc-3.2 and 3.3, but if you have 3.3.1 then you'll have to build the libraries manually.
So, what you'd do it is write a installer stub that displayed a UI 1) queried for compiler model 2) queried for compile model (single threaded, multithreaded, static, dll etc)
And then took that information and went off and downloaded the correct library.
Have you seen my latest post on the other thread. The method I proposed supports both pre-built libraries and a guided build to give the user the choice. It also opens up the setup program to use cases such as: 1. I have a copy of Boost 1.32 on my machine that I am just using headers for (Boost.Build is too complex!). Now I want to use Boost.RegEx on gcc-4.0, but that requires me to use Boost.Build. SOLUTION: run setup.exe; select your local Boost distribution, Boost.RegEx and gcc-4.0; build the libraries and check the results in a friendly summary. 2. I want a standard version of Boost for a supported (w.r.t. pre-build libraries) compiler and don't care about bandwidth as I have a decent connection. SOLUTION: run setup.exe; select next for all options (will download pre-build libraries)! 3. I want to get the latest CVS version of Boost. SOLUTION: run setup.exe; select CVS for download option; use defaults (will build the libraries, not download). 4. I want a standard version of Boost, but have a slow/limited internet connection. SOLUTION: run setup.exe; select defaults except for generating the libraries (select 'build all'). Presto! Everyone is happy :) Reece Haston Dunn Software Engineer, Sophos Web: www.sophos.com Sophos - protecting businesses against viruses and spam