Hi Vladimir, The document looks really good! On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 01:48:41PM +0300, Vladimir Prus wrote:
- To make the "bootstrap + bjam" process the only documented one, since it turns out to be fairly painless on Unix
Yes, bootstrap.sh has really improved building boost.
The result can be previewed at http://lvk.cs.msu.su/~ghost/unix-variants.pdf , see section 5. I would appreciate if folks take a look and suggest whether it can be improved further.
Reading through Section 5.1, I stumbled over specifying "toolset=gcc-4.5", whereas the C++ compiler name is really "g++-4.5". The first line in this section mentions "... default compiler, typically g++" whereas the 4th line says "... command gcc-4.5 works". But gcc-4.5 is not the C++ compiler, it is g++-4.5. Is it true that bjam is smart enough to use g++-4.5 in this case? If so, it's worth clarifying that I wouldn't have to edit project-config.jam in this case. Small comment for Section 5.3: "--build-dir, option that specifies where intermediate build products should be placed". It controls also where the final libraries are placed, I imagine. Perhaps drop "intermediate". Also, you don't need a comma after --build-dir. Overall, this is a really good introduction for someone using the source distribution of Boost. Footnote 1 invites Boost packagers to help ensure the instructions can be used with their packages. However, the document intertwines using Boost to build a program (Sections 4 and 6) with description of the source layout and building Boost itself (Sections 2, 3, 5). This is very natural for someone who just downloaded the boost sources but is not the emphasis I'd place if I were writing this for Debian. For a Debian user getting started with Boost, I would replace "1 Get Boost" with a description of the Debian package structure. I would need only the "Header Organization" box from Section 2. I would remove Section 5 entirely. In Section 6 I would emphasize the "layout=system" library naming and mention the fully-decorated naming in passing. And, of course, the -I and -L options are unnecessary as is setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH. Etc. Is your goal that a single document encompass the source distribution and, say, the Debian distribution? Cheers, -Steve