On the Unix-like operating systems, the order in which static libraries are specified when invoking the linker is important, because by default, the linker uses one pass though the libraries list. Passing the libraries in the incorrect order will lead to a link error. Further, this behaviour is often used to make one library override symbols from another. So, sometimes it's necessary to force specific order of libraries.

Boost.Build tries to automatically compute the right order. The primary rule is that if library a "uses" library b, then library a will appear on the command line before library b. Library a is considered to use b is b is present either in the sources of a or in its requirements. To explicitly specify the use relationship one can use the <use> feature. For example, both of the following lines will cause a to appear before b on the command line:

lib a : a.cpp b ;
lib a : a.cpp : <use>b ;

The same approach works for searched libraries, too:

lib z ;
lib png : : <use>z ;
exe viewer : viewer png z ;