search

boostorg / boost_install

8 stars 32 forks source link

Building without a library seems to install its headers #50

Closed mablanchard closed 3 years ago

mablanchard commented 3 years ago

I'm trying to partially build Boost 1.75.0 by passing using b2's --without-<library> option:

  --without-<library>     Do not build, stage, or install the specified
                          <library>. By default, all libraries are built.

For example for the log library:

./b2 --without-log

The configuration reports gives:

    - log                      : not building

This prevent the libboost_log from being built and installed (which is indeed expected) but it the log headers at include/boost/log/ still get installed by ./b2 install... Is that expected or am I missing something here?

pdimov commented 3 years ago

It's expected. The current Boost architecture, for backward compatibility, is that headers in a release are all copied into the boost/ top-level directory, deleted from their original locations in libs/<libname>/include, and from then on, there is no way to determine which header belongs to which library. The --without option only applies to what is built, and not to what headers are installed. (It also doesn't apply to header-only libraries.)

This is also reflected in downstream packaging, e.g. on Ubuntu you have libboost-dev which contains all the headers, and libboost-log which contains the built Log library.

mablanchard commented 3 years ago

Ok, thanks for the quick reply!