boost: don't install docs by default

[mascguy (Christopher Nielsen)]

Presently, the default footprint of boost is a bit... well... heavy.

Of the 38,258 files installed, 24,216 of those are documentation-related:

$ port contents boost | wc -l
   38258
$ port contents boost | ggrep "/opt/local/share/doc/boost" | wc -l
   24216
$ port contents boost | ggrep --invert-match "/opt/local/share/doc/boost" | wc -l
   14042

And while HFS compression does reduce the storage footprint for those docs, it's still significant. (Note that the first figure - 46 MB - is the actual storage usage, with HFS compression. The second figure indicates the size without, illustrating how large the documentation footprint is.)

$ gdu -hs /opt/local/share/doc/boost
46M	/opt/local/share/doc/boost
$ gdu -hs --apparent-size /opt/local/share/doc/boost
248M	/opt/local/share/doc/boost

Not only that, but the sheer number of files causes the installation to take up to several minutes on slower Macs. An uninstall takes a significant amount of time too.

So, I'd suggest we add a new docs variant, disabled by default. That would significantly reduce the overall footprint of the port, and improve install/uninstall time.

[mascguy (Christopher Nielsen)]

As for the variant name, perhaps something unique like boost_docs might be better, to ensure they aren't inadvertently enabled by an upstream +docs for another port...

[mf2k (Frank Schima)]

Any variant for documentation should be called "docs". See #58338.

[mascguy (Christopher Nielsen)]

Michael, I'll submit a PR for this work. There's just one thing I need help with: Is it possible to disable building the documentation via the Jam config/args? (I looked through the various config files, etc, and didn't see a way to do it. Ditto for the Boost website. Perhaps I just missed it though?)

Worst-case, we can simply delete the docs area when +docs isn't enabled. So no biggie if that's the only option.

[mascguy (Christopher Nielsen)]

It looks like we don't even have to delete the generated docs. Instead, we simply don't install them.

PR submitted:

​PR 11050 - boost: add new variant 'docs', disabled by default

[Christopher Nielsen <mascguy@…>]

In 432d91c61320b8f0b3f79a59369eadf8b81af696/macports-ports (master):

boost: add new variant 'docs', disabled by default

Closes: #62182