Re: [patch #8254] AX_BOOST_BASE: fix lib detection on multi-arch systems

[Cory Fields]

(Subscribed to the list to reply, sorry for the formatting kludge here)

> Libtool has code to figure out which dirs are in linkers search path. Perhaps 
> we should borrow that code and let the linker tell us where to look for boost 
> rather than patching for every packager.
>
> I don't mind this patch. On the contrary, but I'm just sharing what I though 
> might be a better idea. Any thoughts?

Sure, that would be much more reasonable than the current approach by
the module. A more comprehensive fix, though, would require more time
than I am able to spend on this. As far as I can tell, this patch
guards against the only big change distro packagers are likely to make
any time soon, so it should suffice for us.

Fwiw, I've done an implementation of what you mentioned above before,
which pretty much consists of invoking the linker with some dump
option (-Wl,--print-map, -Wl,--trace, etc) and grepping the output, or
probing the resulting object. I found it to be pretty sensitive to the
compiler/linker used. Maybe libtool has a saner approach?

Seems to me a simpler route would be to avoid trying to find the path
entirely, and just link-test with -lboost_foo, -lboost_foo_mt, etc,
until one hits. I assume there's some need for the path that precludes
this more typical approach?

Thanks for the quick and helpful response!

Regards,
Cory