kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Dick Hollenbeck <dick@...>]

Alain Mouette wrote:
> Dick Hollenbeck escreveu:
>
> > Alain Mouette wrote:
> >
> > > >
> > > Does anyone have a link to the 9.04 files that are needed to install 
> > > boost 1.37?
> > >
> > > it would help a lot, many people :)
> > http://packages.ubuntu.com/ You can search from here, 
> > and get this:
> > http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=boost&searchon=names&suite=jaunty&section=all
>
> Well, I had already gone down that road but I ended with more questions 
> than I had before. That is why I asked for help...


*THE ANSWER*


It is not a certainty that you can install a package from a newer 
distribution onto an older revision of that same distro. Usually what 
determines this is the degree of change in the C and C++ runtime 
libraries. Often you can. The package you would need is boost-dev. 

boost-dev is a bunch of header files. They do not need to be compiled. 
(Header files are not compiled.) So if you find your "boost 
installation process", whatever it is, needs or wants you to compile 
anything, then stop. You have gone down the wrong path.


Once you have installed the header files, realize that they do not need 
to be installed in the "standard place". With the wonderful CMake 
system used by Kicad, you tell your Kicad build environment where your 
boost header files are by running ccmake, yes ccmake, not cmake. You do 
this once, and then you should not have to do it again anytime soon.


On linux, the simplest way to install working boost headers is to use a 
partial tree of the boost SVN repo, instead of installing a distro 
package. Here is what I do, and I use revision 52863 which is known to 
work for me. It may be that HEAD also works, but until it is necessary, 
I have been content to use revision 52863 from the boost-dev repo.


$ mkdir svn

$ cd svn

$ svn -r 52863 co https://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/trunk/boost

Now directory * svn/boost * (actually its full path) is what you tell 
ccmake about so it knows where your "boost installation" is. Note that 
we do not even have to copy the header files to a "standard place".


This process will work across any linux distribution, and distro 
revision. So now you know how to fish, rather than simply solve this 
problem for a particular linux distro and revision.


Dick