Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by electroly 1169 days ago
Using only the header-only stuff is super easy; there's no deciphering or extracting at all. You just include the headers and _don't_ link the Boost library and see if it builds. If it doesn't, then I guess that wasn't a header-only library. You're not building or installing Boost at all; you're just downloading a copy of the headers. Only the template instantiations you actually use will end up in your binary.

(This sounds flippant but it's literally how I use boost in real life. Why decipher when the compiler can just tell you?)