I'm going to try to write a better getting started guide for the boost documentation tools, outside of the individual tools' documentation. Just a very rough outline to start with. This will be of only limited scope - full documentation will be in the tools' documentation.

How to build boost documentation

Required packages (see below for platform specific instructions).

• bjam
• xsltproc
• ​Norman Walsh's DocBook XSL stylesheets Note that sourceforge has organized these files so that the documentation for the stylesheets is the first set of files offered for download; you have to look farther down for the actual stylesheets.
• ​The DocBook DTD
• doxygen (optional for writing your own, but required for several libraries' documentation).
• latex (optional for writing your own, but required for Boost.Accumulators' formulas).
• An FO processor, either Apache FOP from ​http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/ or XEP Personal edition from ​http://www.renderx.com/download/personal.html (Optional, required only for building PDF's).
• A Java runtime (Optional, required for the FO procesors).

The overall toolchain setup looks like this:

Windows, using the Windows command prompt and Cygwin toolchain

First, you need to get the boost build tools set up.

Install these ​Cygwin packages:

• Libs/libxml2
• Libs/libxslt
• Text/docbook-xml42
• Text/docbook-xsl
• Devel/gcc4-g++ (optional, if you don't already have a compiler)
• Devel/doxygen (optional, used for several libraries)
• Text/texlive (optional, used for the accumulators library documentation)
• Graphics/ghostscript (optional, also used for the accumulators library documentation)

As of Cygwin 1.7.5, May 2010, the Cygwin installation isn't using Windows symlinks for a few packages, so you will need to set up your own in the Cygwin bin directory:

• cd cygwin-root/bin
• mklink latex.exe pdfetex.exe
• mklink gswin32c.exe gs.exe

If you have an older version of Windows that doesn't support symlinks, you might try copying pdfetex.exe -> latex.exe and gs.exe -> gwsin32c.exe.

Build bjam. Be sure to under the Windows command prompt rather than Cygwin bash:

• cd boost-root/tools/jam/src
• build
• copy bin.ntx86\bjam.exe to a directory in your path.

Be sure your home directory bjam configuration file (%HOMEDRIVE%\%HOMEPATH%\user-config.jam) is set up correctly. Here is an actual user-config.jam for a machine with Cygwin installed in c:\cygwin and several C++ compilers configured:

using msvc : 9.0express ;
using msvc : 10.0express ;
using gcc : 4.3 : c:/cygwin/bin/g++-4 ;

# MinGW from www.equation.com/servlet/equation.cmd?fa=fortran
using gcc : 4.4 : c:/mingw/gcc-4.4/bin/g++ : <cxxflags>"-std=gnu++0x" ;

using xsltproc ;

using boostbook
    : c:/cygwin/usr/share/sgml/docbook/xsl-stylesheets
    : c:/cygwin/usr/share/sgml/docbook/xml-dtd-4.2
    ;

using doxygen ;
using quickbook ;

Windows, using the Windows command prompt and manually downloaded toolchain

First, you need to get the boost build tools set up, see the getting started guide for an introduction.

• Create directory for boost tools, say c:\boost-tools.
• Create directory for binaries, say c:\boost-tools\bin.
• Add to path.
• xml tools from ​Igor Zlatkovic. Require: iconv, libxml2 and libxslt, zlib.

Make directory for xml files, say c:\boost-tools\xml.

• ​Norman Walsh's DocBook XSL stylesheets from their ​Sourceforge download page to c:\boost-tools\xml\docbook-xsl.
• ​The DocBook DTD to c:\boost-tools\xml\docbook-xml.

user-config.jam in the boost build search path, for most people this will be C:\Documents and Settings\username.

using xsltproc
    : "C:/boost-tools/bin/xsltproc.exe"
    ;

using boostbook
    : "C:/boost-tools/xml/docbook-xsl"
    : "C:/boost-tools/xml/docbook-xml"
    ;

If you want to build the complete documentation, you'll also need to install:

• ​Doxygen
• ​MikTeX - select the version under 'Download' in the left column, the basic installer should be fine.
• ​Ghostscript - click on the latest version of 'GPL Ghostscript', there should be a link for the latest self extracting download near the bottom.

The bin directories of these tools needs to be added to the path. I think Doxygen and MikTex's installers do this for you, but ghostscript's doesn't.

user-config.jam:

using xsltproc
    : "C:/Users/example/Documents/boost/xml/bin/xsltproc.exe"
    ;

using boostbook
    : "C:/Users/example/Documents/boost/xml/docbook-xsl"
    : "C:/Users/example/Documents/boost/xml/docbook-xml"
    ;

using doxygen ;
using quickbook ;

Windows, using bash and Cygwin toolchain

First, you need to get the boost build tools set up. bjam will need to be built using cygwin, so don't use the prebuilt windows binary.

Cygwin packages:

• Libs/libxml2
• Libs/libxslt
• Text/docbook-xml42
• Text/docbook-xsl
• Devel/gcc4-g++
• Devel/doxygen (optional, used for several libraries)
• Text/tetex-extra (optional, used for the accumulators library documentation)
• Graphics/ghostscript (optional, also used for the accumulators library documentation)

Build bjam:

• Start bash
• cd ''boost-root''/tools/jam/src
• ./build.sh
• copy file (bin.cygwinx86/bjam.exe) to a directory in your path.

Be sure your home directory bjam configuration file (~/user-config.jam) is set up correctly:

using gcc : 4 : /usr/bin/g++-4 ;

using xsltproc ;

using boostbook
    : /usr/share/docbook-xsl
    : /usr/share/xml/docbook/4.2
    ;

using doxygen ;
using quickbook ;

Unix with automatic script

TODO

OS X

TODO: Fink

Macports has packages for boost-build and boost-jam but I think it might be best to use the version from your boost tarball/checkout, so that you're up to date. OS X comes with xsltproc, but it's too old, so a recent version needs to be installed.

Updated: Mac OS X 10.6.2 comes with "new enough" versions of libxml, libxslt, and xsltproc.

Install libxslt, docbook and doxygen using macports:

sudo port install docbook-xml-4.2 docbook-xsl libxslt doxygen

user-config.jam:

using darwin ;
using doxygen ;
using boostbook
    : /opt/local/share/xsl/docbook-xsl/
    : /opt/local/share/xml/docbook/4.2
    ;

Latex and Ghostscript

​List of TeX distributions

MacPorts

With macports latex is a large download - very slow.

Texlive_base doesn't seem to compile with x11: ​http://trac.macports.org/ticket/18326

To avoid installing x11:

sudo port install graphviz +no_x11
sudo port install texlive_base +no_x11

(or maybe just add +no_x11 to the following command line).

sudo port install texlive

BasicTex

Install BasicTeX-2008.dmg and mactex-additions.mpkg.zip from ​http://www.tug.org/mactex/morepackages.html

Add to path /usr/local/bin/ (probably already in path) and /usr/local/texlive/2008basic/bin/universal-darwin/.

Debian/ubuntu

First, you need to get the boost build tools set up, see the getting started guide for an introduction. You can probably use the bjam package from your distribution.

sudo apt-get install xsltproc docbook-xsl docbook-xml

# Optional extras:
sudo apt-get install doxygen texlive-latex-base

You might also want to use the --no-install-recommends command line flag for texlive-latex-base to reduce the number of packages it installs.

Add to user-config.jam:

using boostbook ;
using quickbook ;

# Only add this line if you have installed doxygen.
using doxygen ;

Pre-build quickbook

Quickbook is built automatically during the build process, but as it takes a little while to build you might prefer to build it in advance. To do this, in the command line type (replacing $BOOST_ROOT with the root directory of boost):

cd $BOOST_ROOT/tools/quickbook
bjam dist-bin

Or for windows:

cd $BOOST_ROOT\tools\quickbook
bjam dist-bin

Change using quickbook in user-config.jam to (replacing $BOOST_ROOT with the root directory of boost, as before):

using quickbook : $BOOST_ROOT/dist/bin/quickbook

Windows:

using quickbook : $BOOST_ROOT\\dist\\bin\\quickbook

How to build pdfs

First of all you will need an FO processor, there are basically only two free two choices here:

• Apache FOP from ​http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/
• XEP Personal edition from ​http://www.renderx.com/download/personal.html

The XEP processor generally produces much better results, but inserts a small "built with XEP" advert in the footer of each page. You will also need a Java virtual machine to run the FO processor on.

(Nov 06, 2012): Note that FOP 1.0 has a ​bug that causes it to crash with an exception when attempting to build most Boost Docs. There are also some bugs that cause it to reject legal FO code, meaning only a subset of Boost libraries can be built with it. Currently we can only really recommend XEP for building PDF's of Boost documentation.

You will then need to edit your user-config.jam file to point to the location of the FO processor, for example:

using fop :  
   # path to invocation batch file:
   C:/Progra~1/RenderX/xep/xep.bat
   :
   # path to Java installation, this is ignored if you're using XEP:
   C:/PROGRA~1/Java/j2re1.4.2_12 
   ;

You should now be able to build pdf docs via:

bjam pdf

Note: you may actually experience errors at this point if Java runs out of memory, whether or not this occurs depends on the complexity of the documentation being built and how you Java runtime is configured. One way to fix this error is to add the -Xmx option to the Java invocation command in the batch file that invokes the FO processor, for example -Xmx500m if you want to allow the FO processor to use 500MBytes of memory.

How to test your build setup

There is a set of test documentation that covers all the tools that can be used in the boost-root/doc/test directory.

Building this requires quickbook, doxygen, latex, dvips and ps as well as the basic Boostbook setup.

Useful Links

• ​DocBook XSL: The Complete Guide
• ​Docbook XSL Stylesheet Reference.
• ​Docbook, the Definitive Guide.