Just to be clear here - I haven't changed anything yet - or even experimented with such a change, more like thinking out loud.
It was to THIS change I referred when I said: "John was going to change" no change should have been necessary.........................
OK, I misunderstood, apologies. Note however that if their install defines VS80COMNTOOLS system wide then the change I made *will have no effect*. However is it possible to install VC++ for a single user rather than system wide? I don't know - but you can with most tools - but it's been a while since I've installed VC++ and can't remember: but if you can then I wouldn't expect VS80COMNTOOLS to be set system wide.
However if a particular toolset readily identifies itself in the registry, that seems to be a lot more reliable than messing with environment variables that the user has to type in every time they want to use Boost.
I didn't suggest that the user type in anything, I suggested we use the environment variable(s) which are put there by the install process.
You're right, on reflection the toolset as it stands now will work without the user having to set anything: you're obviously way ahead of me, so I'll just shut up now ;-) John.