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This section describes various ways to install built target and arbitrary files.
For installing a built target you should use the
install
rule, which follows the common syntax. For
example:
install dist : hello helpers ;
will cause the targets hello
and helpers
to
be moved to the dist
directory, relative to
Jamfile's directory. The directory can
be changed with the location
property:
install dist : hello helpers : <location>/usr/bin ;
While you can achieve the same effect by changing the target name to
/usr/bin
, using the location
property is better, because it allows you to use a mnemonic target
name.
The location
property is especially handy when the location
is not fixed, but depends on build variant or environment variables:
install dist : hello helpers : <variant>release:<location>dist/release <variant>debug:<location>dist/debug ; install dist2 : hello helpers : <location>$(DIST) ;
See also conditional properties and environment variables
Specifying the names of all libraries to install can be boring. The
install
allows you to specify only the top-level executable
targets to install, and automatically install all dependencies:
install dist : hello : <install-dependencies>on <install-type>EXE <install-type>LIB ;
will find all targets that hello
depends on, and install
all of those which are either executables or libraries. More
specifically, for each target, other targets that were specified as
sources or as dependency properties, will be recursively found. One
exception is that targets referred with the use
feature
are not considered, because that feature is typically used to refer to
header-only libraries.
If the set of target types is specified, only targets of that type
will be installed, otherwise, all found target will be installed.
By default, the install
rules will stip paths from
it's sources. So, if sources include a/b/c.hpp
,
the a/b
part will be ignored. To make the
install
rule preserve the directory hierarchy you need
to use the install-source-root
feature to specify the
root of the hierarchy you are installing. Relative paths from that
root will be preserved. For example, if you write:
install headers : a/b/c.h : <location>/tmp <install-source-root>a ;
the a file named /tmp/b/c.h
will be created.
The alias
rule can be used when targets must be installed into several
directories:
alias install : install-bin install-lib ; install install-bin : applications : /usr/bin ; install install-lib : helper : /usr/lib ;
Because the install
rule just copies targets, most
free features [5]
have no effect when used in requirements of the install
rule.
The only two which matter are
dependency
and, on Unix,
dll-path
.
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Note |
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(Unix specific). On Unix, executables built with Boost.Build typically
contain the list of paths to all used dynamic libraries. For
installing, this is not desired, so Boost.Build relinks the executable
with an empty list of paths. You can also specify additional paths for
installed executables with the |