From: Steven T. Hatton (hattons_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-09-02 23:05:38
>From reading the documentation on boost.org, I have gotten the impression I
don't need to set $BOOST_BUILD_PATH and $BOOST_ROOT. I'm more than a little
confused about how I should use the boost libraries. Part of this comes from
the fact that it is not clear to me exactly where the demarkation is between
using the build system to build boost, and using it to build my own programs.
Some of my confusion comes from the appearant change in configuration
requirements described in the documentation. It is suggested I don't need
the environment variable used with earlier releases. One of these variables
is $BOOST_ROOT, which the documentation used as an example of how to build
boost. That example was exactly what I successfully (I believe) build the
libraries with.
I'm using SuSE Linux 9.1 on a P4 box. Some basic questions are these:
When I downloaded and built boost, I first fetched the source for bjam. This
is the name of the file I downloaded: boost-jam-3.1.10.tgz It compiled quite
nicely, and I copied the resulting bjam jam mkjambase and yyacc to a
location in my path. Are there anything other things such as configuration
files I need to reside with the binary executables? Are there necessary
configuration file that I need to have visible to these programs, even if
they are not colocated?
I then build boost with the command:
bjam --prefix=$BOOST_ROOT "-sTOOLS=gcc" install
after setting my BOOST_ROOT the way I wanted it. That resulted in two
directories being placed in $BOOST_ROOT/ one is called $BOOST_ROOT/include/
the other is called $BOOST_ROOT/lib/. Under $BOOST_ROOT/include/ I have
<path>/boost-1_31/boost/ which contains dozens of header files. I added
$BOOST_ROOT/include/boost-1_31 to my $INCLUDE_PATH, and
$BOOST_ROOT/lib to my $LIBRARY_PATH and $LD_LIBRARY_PATH variables. Is this
the correct way to configure my system to use boost?
Is there anything else I need to do in order to compile my programs against
the boost headers and libraries?
Will the boost libraries work as well as other, comperable libraries using
autotools rather than bjam? Are there any special accommodations I need to
make in order to use boost with the gnu build tools?
Do I need to do anything special to use boost with bjam that does not involve
placing files in my current project directories? For example, do I need to
provide a global configuration file of some kind? Is it a preferred option,
even if not strictly required?
There is much remaining in the source directory where I compiled boost. Is
that something I need to also put in an accessible place on my system? If
so, what so I need to put where, and how to I modify my environment variable
to facilitate its use?
-- Regards, Steven