How do you add Boost libraries in CMakeLists txt

Question

I need to add Boost libraries into my CMakeLists txt  How do you do it or how do you add it

User · Answer

Try as saying Boost documentation   set Boost USE STATIC LIBS        ON     only find static libs set Boost USE DEBUG LIBS         OFF    ignore debug libs and  set Boost USE RELEASE LIBS       ON     only find release libs  set Boost USE MULTITHREADED      ON  set Boost USE STATIC RUNTIME    OFF   find package Boost 1 66 0 COMPONENTS date time filesystem system      if Boost FOUND         include directories   Boost INCLUDE DIRS       add executable foo foo cc         target link libraries foo   Boost LIBRARIES   endif     Don t forget to replace foo to your project name and components to yours

User · Answer

May this could helpful for some people  I had a naughty error   undefined reference to symbol   ZN5boost6system15system categoryEv    usr lib x86 64-linux-gnu libboost system so 1 58 0  error adding symbols  DSO missing from command line There were some issue of cmakeList txt and somehow I was missing to explicitly include the  system  and  filesystem  libraries  So  I wrote these lines in CMakeLists txt  These lines are written at the beginning before creating the executable of the project  as at this stage we don t need to link boost library to our project executable   set Boost USE STATIC LIBS OFF   set Boost USE MULTITHREADED ON    set Boost USE STATIC RUNTIME OFF   set Boost NO SYSTEM PATHS TRUE    if  Boost NO SYSTEM PATHS    set BOOST ROOT    CMAKE CURRENT SOURCE DIR        3p boost     set BOOST INCLUDE DIRS    BOOST ROOT  include     set BOOST LIBRARY DIRS    BOOST ROOT  lib   endif  Boost NO SYSTEM PATHS    find package Boost COMPONENTS regex date time system filesystem thread graph program options    find package Boost REQUIRED regex date time system filesystem thread graph program options  find package Boost COMPONENTS program options REQUIRED    Now at the end of the file  I wrote these lines by considering  KeyPointEvaluation  as my project executable   if Boost FOUND      include directories   BOOST INCLUDE DIRS       link directories   Boost LIBRARY DIRS       add definitions   Boost DEFINITIONS        include directories   Boost INCLUDE DIRS         target link libraries KeyPointEvaluation   Boost LIBRARIES       target link libraries  KeyPointEvaluation   Boost PROGRAM OPTIONS LIBRARY    Boost FILESYSTEM LIBRARY    Boost REGEX LIBRARY    Boost SYSTEM LIBRARY   endif

User · Answer

Adapting  LainIwakura s answer for modern CMake syntax with imported targets  this would be   set Boost USE STATIC LIBS OFF   set Boost USE MULTITHREADED ON    set Boost USE STATIC RUNTIME OFF   find package Boost 1 45 0 COMPONENTS filesystem regex    if Boost FOUND      add executable progname file1 cxx file2 cxx       target link libraries progname Boost  filesystem Boost  regex  endif     Note that it is not necessary anymore to specify the include directories manually  since it is already taken care of through the imported targets Boost  filesystem and Boost  regex  regex and filesystem can be replaced by any boost libraries you need

User · Answer

You can use find package to search for available boost libraries  It defers searching for Boost to FindBoost cmake  which is default installed with CMake   Upon finding Boost  the find package   call will have filled many variables  check the reference for FindBoost cmake   Among these are BOOST INCLUDE DIRS  Boost LIBRARIES and Boost XXX LIBRARY variabels  with XXX replaced with specific Boost libraries  You can use these to specify include directories and target link libraries   For example  suppose you would need boost  program options and boost  regex  you would do something like   find package  Boost REQUIRED COMPONENTS program options regex   include directories    Boost INCLUDE DIRS    add executable  run main cpp     Example application based on main cpp    Alternatively you could use   Boost LIBRARIES  here  target link libraries  run   Boost PROGRAM OPTIONS LIBRARY    Boost REGEX LIBRARY      Some general tips     When searching  FindBoost checks the environment variable  ENV BOOST ROOT   You can set this variable before calling find package if necessary  When you have multiple build-versions of boost  multi-threaded  static  shared  etc   you can specify you desired configuration before calling find package  Do this by setting some of the following variables to On  Boost USE STATIC LIBS  Boost USE MULTITHREADED  Boost USE STATIC RUNTIME When searching for Boost on Windows  take care with the auto-linking  Read the  NOTE for Visual Studio Users  in the reference    My advice is to disable auto-linking and use cmake s dependency handling  add definitions  -DBOOST ALL NO LIB   In some cases  you may need to explicitly specify that a dynamic Boost is used  add definitions  -DBOOST ALL DYN LINK

User · Answer

I agree with the answers 1 and 2  However  I prefer to specify each library separately  This makes the depencencies clearer in big projects  Yet  there is the danger of mistyping the  case-sensitive  variable names  In that case there is no direct cmake error but some undefined references linker issues later on  which may take some time to resolve  Therefore I use the following cmake function   function VerifyVarDefined    foreach lib   ARGV        if DEFINED   lib       else DEFINED   lib         message SEND ERROR  Variable   lib  is not defined       endif DEFINED   lib     endforeach   endfunction VerifyVarDefined    For the example mentioned above  this looks like   VerifyVarDefined Boost PROGRAM OPTIONS LIBRARY Boost REGEX LIBRARY  target link libraries  run   Boost PROGRAM OPTIONS LIBRARY    Boost REGEX LIBRARY      If I had written  BOOST PROGRAM OPTIONS LIBRARY  there would have been an error triggered by cmake and not much later triggered by the linker

User · Answer

Put this in your CMakeLists txt file  change any options from OFF to ON if you want    set Boost USE STATIC LIBS OFF   set Boost USE MULTITHREADED ON    set Boost USE STATIC RUNTIME OFF   find package Boost 1 45 0 COMPONENTS  boost libraries here     if Boost FOUND      include directories   Boost INCLUDE DIRS        add executable progname file1 cxx file2 cxx       target link libraries progname   Boost LIBRARIES   endif     Obviously you need to put the libraries you want where I put  boost libraries here   For example  if you re using the filesystem and regex library you d write   find package Boost 1 45 0 COMPONENTS filesystem regex

User · Answer

Additional information to abouve answers for those still having problems   Last version of Cmake s FindBoost cmake may not content last version fo Boost  Add it if needed  Use -DBoost DEBUG 0 configuration flag to see info on problems  See for library naming format  Use Boost COMPILER and Boost ARCHITECTURE            suffix vars if needed

[boost] How do you add Boost libraries in CMakeLists.txt?

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