Boost contains over 120 libraries and counting, with over 70 authors and maintainers. There are many parts of Boost that I will never use (e.g. most of the pre c++11 libs), but the pros of having it available when you need it far outweigh the cons.
If a particular library is costing you more in compile time than it's worth in convenience, just rm -rf it from your Boost install -- better yet, write a script to prepend `static_assert(false, "this header is banned by decree of vvanders");` to the top of the banned headers.
There's plenty in Boost to love -- don't let a few rotten apples spoil the bunch.
So I should hack apart my install just to get to some basic level of compiler performance?
Last time I looked at boost pulling in any header would pull in all of them, that's why it takes so long to compile. In this day with any modern C++0x11 compiler I don't really see the need for boost.
If a particular library is costing you more in compile time than it's worth in convenience, just rm -rf it from your Boost install -- better yet, write a script to prepend `static_assert(false, "this header is banned by decree of vvanders");` to the top of the banned headers.
There's plenty in Boost to love -- don't let a few rotten apples spoil the bunch.
Full disclosure: I'm a Boost developer