Boost.Thread Linking - boost_thread vs. boost_thread-mt
It's not clear to me what linking options exist for the Boost.Thread 1.34.1 library. I'm on Ubuntu 8.04 and I've found that when using either boost_thread or boost_thread-mt during linking both compile and run, but I don't see any documentation on these or any other linking options in above link.
What Boost.Thread linking options are available and what do they mean?
Answer
Well...
The first amusing thing is that the -mt modifier in the name is to indicate the library is Ok for multithreading. Which could lead us to believe that boost_thread (without this modifier) could be multithread-unsafe...
But the real thing is that (as seen on my own Ubuntu 10.04 box), boost_thread is a soft link to boost_thread-mt, which means the two are one and the same.
If you want to verify it, you can open a console on your ubuntu (make the console fullscreen because the names are long), then type:
cd /usr/lib
to move to the directory where the Boost libraries are. And then:
ls -l ./libboost_thread*
Which will list all the files starting with libboost_thread, with additionnal information. The result will be something like:
[...] ./libboost_thread.a
[...] ./libboost_thread-mt.a -> libboost_thread.a
As you can see, libboost_thread.a is a static library, and libboost_thread-mt.a is a soft link to libboost_thread.a