[Nix-dev] Boost libraries

[Peter Simons]

Hi,

 | commit 9db32c5cf79c749d39a8fd3317ae6cc03bebde7c
 | Author: eelco <eelco at 70bd8c7a-acb8-0310-9f0d-9cc1c95dcdbb>
 | Date:   Fri Apr 3 23:54:20 2009 +0000
 |
 | * Boost: cut the installed size from 257 MB (!!!) to 58 MB. It
 |   required all that space because it was building static/shared,
 |   single-thread/multi-threaded, and debug/production versions of the
 |   libraries - as well as every combination of those. Now we build
 |   only the shared, multi-threaded, production version, which needs
 |   only 8 MB. [...]

this change breaks my installation. I do need some of the variants that
were deleted from the expression, i.e. the variants for single-threaded
and debug builds. Arguably, it would be nice if the Boost expression
would offer more granularity to allow depending on specific libraries in
specific variants, but until we have that, removing arbitrary libraries
from the installation doesn't sound like a good idea.

 | * Removed some Boost versions that aren't used anymore.

It feels odd that version 1.36.0 is still available, but (the newer)
version 1.37.0 is not. What exactly does it mean for a package like
Boost to be "unused"?

Take care,
Peter