"David Bergman" <davidb@home.se> writes:
David Abrahams wrote:
Yes, we do [need to flirt with the masses...]. We need maximal adoption in order to be best positioned for standardization. Not just to get the libraries accepted, but also so they are really deserving of standardization.
Ok, so what can I do to assist in this effort? More concretely, what kind of installer are we talking about?
Well, to begin with I think we need a Windows installer for headers and vc7.1 binaries. There are some free pro-quality installer construction systems for Windows out there; I forget the names though. There are a number of valuable possible enhancements I can think of, if you're ambitious: - Allow users to select which libraries they want and: a. use bcp to allow users to cut down how much is actually installed, or b. allow people to cut down how much is actually downloaded (a la cygwin installer) - Add support for binaries for other compilers, although especially when you add STLPort in as a variable there are just too many libs to build to get complete coverage, so: - add support for invoking bjam via a GUI. Preferably this GUI would dynamically show the user the bjam command-line it is composing so that the user would gain some familiarity and be able to step outside the bounds of the GUI eventually.
I would like for us to have an installer-generator (for Windows) so we do not have to recreate, or at least rebuild, the installer for every revision of Boost.
Sounds good. Thanks for volunteering! -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com