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Compiling libHTTP

Note! Currently this guide is aimed at building libHTTP with Visual Studio .NET 2003 but the library is portable and in future this guide should cater for other platforms. If you have one you need help with now post here.

libHTTP is developed under the Boost.Build System v2 (BBv2 from here on). I use this system as it is tightly integrated with Boost and it is portable. Unfortunately the build system does not seem to be in use too much and so may be unknown to many potential users of libHTTP. It is my hope that this document, or future revisions of it, will guide users through the process of building libHTTP.

Step 1, downloading Boost.

libHTTP relies on two Boost libraries not shipped with Boost 1.33.1, namely Boost.ASIO and Boost.Statechart. ASIO is due for inclusion in Boost 1.35 while Statechart will be shipped with 1.34.

For the time being libHTTP releases include the non Boost variant of ASIO and try to keep up with CVS snapshots as appropiate. Users tracking libHTTP SVN will need to download ASIO CVS separately from SourceForge.net.

Since Boost 1.34 appears to be around the corner I am writing this guide towards it and instead of recommending you download 1.33.1 and add Statechart I encourage users to get the release candidate of 1.34 as pre these instructions credited to Dean Michael Berris

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@boost.cvs.sourceforge.net/cvsroot/boost login

cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@boost.cvs.sourceforge.net/cvsroot/boost export -r RC_1_34_0 boost

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@boost.cvs.sourceforge.net/cvsroot/boost logout

Step 2, setting up BBv2.

BBv2 is a very powerful build system well beyond the scope of this article so I am going to concentrate on getting a minimal system up and running capable of compiling libHTTP.

Start with a root folder and into that place the downloaded Boost and libHTTP (called just Http by default) folders. Now inside the root folder create a file called Jamroot with the following text.

import modules ;
import os ;
import errors ;
import feature : feature ;

BOOST_ROOT = [ modules.peek : BOOST_ROOT ] ;

path-constant /boost : $(BOOST_ROOT) ;
path-constant /http : Http/Http ;

Now you need to edit two files. Open up user-config.jam found in the Boost\tools\build\v2\ folder and locate the line

#  using msvc ;

and change it to

using msvc : 7.1 ;

if using Visual Studio .NET 2003.

Secondly open up the Jamfile in the LibHTTP Examples directory (This is subject the chage in the future) and comment (with the hash '#' symbol) out the lines

use-project /osLibs : $(/osLibs) ;
...
<library>/osLibs//mingwwsock2
<library>/osLibs//mingwws2_32

Finally download the bjam exe from SourceForge and place it somewhere accessible on the PATH.

Step 3, building the library.

Almost there . Fire up a console window and create two environment variables with the following commands.

set BOOST_ROOT=**location of Boost**
set BOOST_BUILD_PATH=%BOOST_ROOT%\tools\build\v2

Now navigate to the libHTTP folder and execute the following command to build debug versions of the library linked against the multi-threading C++ libraries.

bjam --v2 msvc-7.1 debug threading=multi

If that is successful you should find four compiled programs at the end of the 'Http\Examples\bin\...\' folder hierarchy. Try running both a server and its corresponding client to make sure everything is working. The library can be found in 'Http\Http\bin\...\' folder.

Appendix

A. The BBv2 docs are a highly recommended read if you wish to better understand the build system.

B. The messy commenting out of references to 'osLibs' is because I haven't found a neat way to implement linking against OS libraries where necessary. This problem only gets worse when OpenSSL support used. I will have to dig around the ASIO Jamfiles to see how Christopher Kohlhoff gets around this.