Re: [gtkmm] using RefPtr out of Gtkmm

[Chris Vine <chris cvine freeserve co uk>]

On Saturday 07 February 2004 3:45 am, Paul Elliott wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 07, 2004 at 12:25:11AM +0000, Chris Vine wrote:
> > Boost is the obvious choice for anyone looking for smart pointers.  Its
> > licence allows you do anything you want with it.
>
> Boost also has its own build system bjam. If you are using
> autoconf/automake/libtool what is the best way to intergrate
> boost libraries into your project? What compiler options to use
> and include directories, library files?
>
> What is the best way to procede with boost?

Internal dependencies, rather than the build system, is the big problem with 
boost.  bjam works, and although by fiddling with the Jamfile in the root 
boost build directory you can build only particular modules, in practice 
because header dependencies are not documented, for any of the major modules 
you will probably end up having to install all the boost headers in your 
system, which are copious, or spend a lot of time trying to separate the 
library out.  For example the program 'lyx' packages and uses the boost regex 
and slot/signal modules (boost/lib/regex and boost/lib/signal), and to do 
that also packages the whole boost header system (boost/boost).  However lyx 
offers a good example of how it can be done, and how to integrate boost into 
an automake based system.

Things are rather better with the boost smart pointers, because they are 
implemented entirely with header files.  If you want to use the boost shared 
pointer for example, you need package only boost/shared_ptr.hpp, the headers 
included by boost/shared_ptr.hpp and the headers included by those included 
headers, and so on, which is manageable (at least that used to be the case, I 
have not looked at recent boost releases).

Chris.