[bug#28690] provide a lib output for boost

[Dave Love]

[Sorry, this got buried.]

Roel Janssen <address@hidden> writes:

> Boost consists of various modules or components.  Some of these are
> "header-only".  How does this patch handle that?

The headers are in the main package, compatibly with the current
situation if you're not doing anything which depends on the runtime.

> If I were to install the "lib" output, could I then compile a C++
> program that uses a header-only part of Boost?

No.  The point of the patch is not to pay the price of the headers in
space at run time.

I think you should be able to use just "boost" as an input, and build
things which require the runtime (certainly for compatibility), hence my
question about the right way to make the dependency.

[I'm not convinced by Guix' convention for packaging compared with
having the development sub-packages of other distributions, at least if
you're trying to stop the closure of one package being comparable with
the size I expect of an entire HPC node image.]