Micha Bieber wrote:
Hi, group
After some years staying away from boost, I installed the 1.32 release. The system was WinXP with VC6. I used the .exe variant. Take the following as remarks from an innocent, also if some of the issues seem to be trivial. Even though, I'm a C++ developer for more than 10 years now. I have used literally thousends of programs and libraries and I know, how quickly someone decides to skip the usage of software completely, simply because the installation becomes too strenous.
Probably you are not that experienced with c++, mayby c only?.. My experience is about 2 years in programming and ~1y in c++ and I had 0 problems installing and using boost on winxp & freebsd. At least if you that experienced you should know that there better versions of vc around for years and it's probably time to check them - with vc6 many boost libs don't compile (libs are ok, compiler can't handle them)
The story:
The exe is in fact an archive. This should be stated, because it suggests some form of installer.
Starting with bjam "-sTOOLS=msvc" stage first of all I got without bigger (*) problems a bulk of single/multi-threaded/whatever_other_configured libraries. So my next wish was to reduce the diversity. I deleted the stage directory and went on.. The doc states the usage of thread flags (-mt) but I was unable to set up a command line intuitively to build only multi-threaded release versions. One (!) example line should provide a recipe to solve this problem. I guess this is possible, after looking in Boost.Build. The next point is, I need in fact only the BGL. So I tried:
Looking inside my lib directory I don't see any libs/dlls for BGL. Probably you can use it as-is without compilation as many other parts of the boost lib. Anyway EVERYTHING is explained really well for starters, just read the manual
v:\src\boost_1_32_0>bjam "-sTOOLS=msvc" --with-graph stage --------------------------------------------------------------------- skipping Boost.Python library build due to missing or incorrect configuration
couldn't find Python.h in "c:/tools/python/include"
You can configure the location of your python installation by setting: PYTHON_ROOT - currently "c:/tools/python" PYTHON_VERSION - The 2-part python Major.Minor version number (e.g. "2.2", NOT "2.2.1") - currently "2.2"
The following are automatically configured from PYTHON_ROOT if not otherwise set:
PYTHON_LIB_PATH - path to Python library object; currently "c:/tools/python/libs" --------------------------------------------------------------------- don't know how to make stage ...found 1 target... ...can't find 1 target...
v:\src\boost_1_32_0>
I dont't know, if the python configuration/message is really necessary. Maybe an existing python installation can be found (I have an ActivePython here). But the the last 3 lines are completely meaningless. What shall I do with it ? A command line error ? A problem with graph's dependencies ? Something else ?
You should read docs and it's enough to overcome this problem...
msvc specific: The library as a heavily template-loaded piece of software should IMO suppress warning 4786 at least in their own implementation files. This makes it easier to spot errors during the installation run.
Generally I lack information regarding dependencies for the single libraries. This should be part of the documentation (a must IMO, some accentuated doxygen graphs for the include hierarchy would be very helpful). Boost contains so many different things, and many people don't need all this stuff. It was absolutely no problem in the past, to install BGL (or its predecessor) by simply copying the header (neglecting for the moment the graphviz) interface. IMO, this should be possible further on, maybe some additional helper like iterator. But it should be documented ! Many people prefer lightwight libraries and it seems also current versions of boost _can_ be configured this way (with som acceptable manual adjusting). So a bit emphasis on these things yet in the doumentations "Getting started" section at a would be a nice thing (tm) and raise the libraries acceptance for new users.
(*) ...failed updating 24 targets... ...skipped 48 targets... ...updated 1051 targets...
Here's everything seems to be ok (if you use vc6 ;) You could try vs 2003 or vc++ 2005.
Micha --