FWIW here are some things I didn't understand or did wrong. (And, of course, playing Devil's Decidedly Dumb Advocate ;-) 1 How do I know if I have the right version of Git? Open GitHub icon and check Tools/About? 2 Windows hint: If you install TortoiseGIT, avoid incompatibilities by using the command line version of Git that TortoiseGIT installs. I.E. place C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\cmd in your path ahead of any other git binaries, such as cygwin. Huh? Am I Shelling, Bashing, Batting or Powershelling? How do I do that? How do I check that I have done this right? Open a Windows command window? Many Windowers will not know how to find/edit their path (and should not need to know?). A link would help. If you have dozens of items in the path, this is pretty awkward to edit? But (after a frustrating failure to get SSH access to work - in a separate post) I got to the main course using https: https://github.com/boostorg/boost.git Submodule 'io' (https://github.com/boostorg/io.git) registered for path 'libs/io' Submodule 'iostreams' (https://github.com/boostorg/iostreams.git) registered for path 'libs/iostreams' <big snip> Cloning into 'tools/quickbook'... Submodule path 'tools/quickbook': checked out '340c65150d175ffc20a9a877247928b3ed5eba1b' Success (4040769 ms @ 31-Dec-2013 17:00:21) Just over an hour (using my nominal 10 mbps living-in-the-boondocks but line-of-sight radio link) - something that should be noted in the docs (along with a strong recommendation to send to a log file)? Other you would miss/lose this very useful info? Building the Boost C++ Libraries. Performing configuration checks - symlinks supported : no - hardlinks supported : yes - 32-bit : yes . And I could test system library OK J Phew! Paul PS I had an existing (luckily current) b2.exe at c:\program files\Boost and this is implicitly in my PATH. Do we need to be more specific about how b2 is stored and accessed? Some check that b2.exe vcvars32.bat etc are all set up correctly would be good? --- Paul A. Bristow, Prizet Farmhouse, Kendal LA8 8AB UK +44 1539 561830 07714330204 mailto:pbristow@hetp.u-net.com pbristow@hetp.u-net.com