Overview

Boost.Build is an easy way to build C++ projects, everywhere. You name you executables and libraries and list their sources. Boost.Build takes care about compiling your sources with right options, creating static and shared libraries, making executables, and other chores -- whether you're using gcc, msvc, or a dozen more supported C++ compilers -- on Windows, OSX, Linux and commercial UNIX systems.

Some of the most important features:

• Simple and high level build description. In most cases a name of target and list of sources is all you need.
• Portability. Most important build properties have symbolic names that work everywhere. Why memorize compiler flags necessary for multi-threaded 64-bit shared library, if Boost.Build can do it for you?
• Variant builds. When you build the same project twice with different properties, all produced files are placed in different directories, so you can build with 2 versions of gcc, or both debug and release variants in one invocation.
• Global dependencies. No matter what directory you build in, Boost.Build will always check all dependencies in your entire project, preventing inconsistent binaries. And it's easy to use one Boost.Build project in other, again with full dependency tracking.
• Usage requirements. A target can specify properties, like include paths and preprocessor defines, that are necessary to use it. Those properties will be automatically applied whenever the target is used.
• Standalone. Boost.Build's only dependency is a C compiler, so it's easy to setup. You can even include all of Boost.Build in your project. Boost.Build does not depend on C++ Boost in any way.

Status and future

Boost.Build is ready to use today, and new features are being actively developed.

The current version of 2.0 Milestone 12, which added support for precompiled headers on gcc, and added 3 new C++ compilers (full changelog).

Milestone 13 is planned as bugfix release. Milestone 14 will focus on improving user documentation. Milestone 15 will see most of Boost.Build reimplemented in Python, to make extending Boost.Build even easier for end users (see PythonPort). The specific issues planned for each release can be found on the roadmap.

Feedback and contributing

Should you have any questions or comments, we'd be glad to hear them. Post everything to the mailing list.

Bugs and feature requests can be entered at our bug tracker.

If you'd like to help with development, just pick a bug in the tracker that you'd like to fix, or feel free to implement any feature you like. There's a separate guidelines document for working on code.

© Copyright David Abrahams and Vladimir Prus 2002-2007. Permission to copy, use, modify, sell and distribute this document is granted provided this copyright notice appears in all copies. This document is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty, and with no claim as to its suitability for any purpose.

Revised Oct 4, 2007