Re: [boost] Status of Visual Studio 2017 support

-----Original Message----- From: Boost [mailto:boost-bounces@lists.boost.org] On Behalf Of Bo Persson via Boost Sent: 21 February 2017 10:17 To: boost@lists.boost.org Cc: Bo Persson Subject: Re: [boost] Status of Visual Studio 2017 support

On 2017-02-21 03:47, Tom Kent via Boost wrote:

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On Mon, Feb 20, 2017 at 5:32 PM, degski via Boost wrote:

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On 20 February 2017 at 16:33, Tom Kent via Boost wrote:

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I strongly diagree with that. The primary use case for windows developers with visual studio is as a user of the headers and .lib/.dll files that come out of boost, inside their project files (configured with a gui to add include/library paths).

You seem to imply that the above is different for developers not on windows (other than the "gui" being bash and vim).

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step where they need to create the compatible static/dynamic libraries

Most users do not need boost build except for the that

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they will later use.

Isn't the above what everybody does with any library (build and link in ones' projects).

Visual studio has all the settings in the project file, so most developers don't have to set them themselves. I guess it is comparable to how a package manager will add libraries to a directory in the default library path on linux. The key here is that developers, even relatively decent ones, may not have a lot of the background that a typical linux user would have. Specifically, opening the command prompt and running a simple b2 command is a lot to ask for even some moderate level windows developers (sadly).

Even if we know how to do it, we might not want to.

Usually on Windows you click on Setup.exe and get a list of options on what you can install. You can see what is available, and select the parts you want.

That is a lot easier, and more confortable, than reading some documentation to try to come up with an incantation like

b2 toolset=msvc-12.0,msvc-14.0

Some of us think that C:\> on a black background perhaps isn't the ultimate user experience.

So are you offering to build a GUI that will output the necessary command line after choosing from the myriad of options? Doesn't sound rocket-science for those that know about these things? GSoC task? Many years ago I would have liked this before I was forced to re-learn more about command lines that I wanted to (having imagined that command line were so last-millennial). Paul --- Paul A. Bristow Prizet Farmhouse Kendal UK LA8 8AB +44 (0) 1539 561830