Amit Bhatia wrote:

I have just downloaded boost 1.3.0 a couple of days ago. Welcome!

While going through the documentation I read that it is not necessary to build the library, completely. [...] I have this doubt that is it equally good practice to just include the .hpp files rather than building the whole libary.

For most of the Boost library items, the header *IS* the entire library (that's the power of templates for you :-) The exceptions are the Python, Regex, Signal and Thread libraries - those you need to build. More details are at http://www.boost.org/tools/build/index.html

Also was just wondering if there are seperate disc groups for each set of libaries like numerics/math in one place ?

There are separate lists for Python and the Boost.build system (details at http://www.boost.org/more/mailing_lists.htm). Other than that, everything goes through here. -- Jim