Boost.Build and bjam

Just to document the essentials.
I had some difficulties in the past using bjam in combination with Boost, and had them again with each new non-Linux platform. The Boost SVN sandbox shows that many Boost authors encounter the same problems, resulting in a variety of creative solutions.

The canonical way to build a project using boost header-only libraries, making with bjam (Boost.Build) is:

• add a clause "<dependency>/boost//headers" into the jamfile (either Jamfile.v2, or Jamfile.jam, or Jamroot.jam)
• add a clause "use-project boost : c:/software/boost_1_43_0 ;" (adapt path if necessary) into the file "user-config.jam" which lives in c:\software\boost_1_43_0\tools\build\v2\user-config.jam
  
• bjam.exe should be in your path
• how does it find Boost.Build? There are two ways to do this:
  • either add a file named 'boost-build.jam' in your directory tree, either at the level of 'Jamroot', or a level higher
  • or set the environment variable BOOST_BUILD_PATH e.g. using export BOOST_BUILD_PATH='c:\software\boost_1_43_0\tools\build\v2' (note that 1) setting environment variables might be inconvenient and 2) if both are set, the boost-build.jam file setting is preferred)

Then your project should compile without errors. For example, this is your source-file "hello.cpp":

#include <iostream>
#include <boost/algorithm/string.hpp>

int main()
{
    std::cout
        << boost::to_upper_copy(std::string("Hello boost!"))
        << std::endl;
    return 0;
}

And this is your jamfile "jamroot.jam":

exe hello
    : hello.cpp
    : <dependency>/boost//headers
    ;

And this is your file "boost-build.jam":

boost-build c:/software/boost_1_43_0/tools/build/v2 ;

And this is at the bottom of your "user-config.jam":

use-project boost : c:/software/boost_1_43_0 ;

This works in at least MSVC (command prompt) and MinGW using GCC

• Thanks to the Boost-List
• See also this link for a well written Boost.Build tutorial
• See also this link with the Boost.Build documentation
• See also this link with a Wiki about Boost.Build