Building Boost on AIX is difficult. Here's a recipe that worked for me, for building on the following platform: Boost source download version 28 AIX 4.3.3 on RS/6000 VisualAge 5.0 Jam: downloaded binary of Boost.Jam Version 3.1.0. OS=AIX. bash shell Building Boost Setup: Downloaded version 28 tar.gz file to ~/boost. Un-gzipped and untarred. Set export BOOST_ROOT=/home/satherb/boost/boost_1_28_0 Attempt: jam "-sTOOLS=vacpp" Result: Many compilation errors, in building of regexp library. For example: Error: "libs/regex/build/../src/cpp_regex_traits.cpp", line 196.39: 1540-0257 (S) An object or reference of type "std::messages_base::catalog" cannot be initialized with an expression of type "int". Attempt: in cpp_regex_traits.cpp", line 196, changed "-1" to "(size_t) 1" Result: compiler says "cannot be initialised with type unsigned long." for the same line. Attempt: Noted that www.boost.org says that threads lib does not depend on regex or python. Edited Jamfile to comment out unnecessary targets python and regex. Result: Most errors are "Thread support is unavailable". Looking at source indicates this is because BOOST_HAS_THREADS macro is undefined. Attempt: export BOOST_HAS_THREADS=1 Result: same errors. Attempt: run ./configure Result: configure gives error message that says "compiler does not produce output" (or something like that) However, running configure again worked! Here were the recent settings of environmental variables: export BOOST_ROOT=/home/satherb/boost/boost_1_28_0 export _MT=1 export CC=xlC_r export CXX=xlC export _POSIX_THREADS=1 export LIBS=-lpthread (I don't know which of these was the key. If you discover the answer, please let me know.) Attempt: Did as configure suggested: "Adjustments to boost configuration have been written to user.hpp, copy this to boost/config/user.hpp to use "as is" " Result: jam still gives "Thread support is unavailable" errors. Attempt: added a line to boost/config/user.hpp: #define BOOST_HAS_THREADS Result: builds! (Don't know yet if it works properly, of course. The examples don't build.) Bob Sather bob.sather@lloydstsb.delete_this_part.co.uk