This is kind of a workaround to avoid having to maintain two variants.
Explanation: between Boost 1.42 and 1.52 there was the transition to a
reworked version of the filesystem library, itroducing some breaking changes
The new version distinguishes much clearer between the native and the
generic representation of paths -- which becomes relevant when porting
to non-POXIX operating systems.
Actually the intention was to use the generic path representation in all
configuration; currently this distinction is moot, since we're caring
only for POSIX systems.
So the workaround is to use the fsys::path::string() function, which
is available in both versions, but changed meaning to yield the native
string. Later, when able to deprecate older Boost versions, we should
switch to generic_string()
Note: an alternative solution was found by Mike Fisher in 3b39f35
using the compiletime define BOOST_FILESYSTEM_VERSION=2
See also ticket #896