Cmake doesn t find Boost

Question

I m trying to configure a project using CMake  but it fails to find Boost libraries even though they are in the specified folder  I have specified Boost INCLUDE DIR  Boost LIBRARYDIR and BOOST ROOT   but I still get an error saying that CMake is not able to find Boost  What could be the reason of such error

User · Answer

If you are building your own boost do not forget to use the --layout versioned otherwise the search for a particular version of library will fail

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Are you sure you are doing it the correct way  The idea is that CMake sets BOOST INCLUDE DIR  BOOST LIBRARYDIR and BOOST ROOT automatically  Do something like this in CMakeLists txt   FIND PACKAGE Boost  IF  Boost FOUND      INCLUDE DIRECTORIES   Boost INCLUDE DIR       ADD DEFINITIONS   -DHAS BOOST    ENDIF     If boost is not installed in a default location and can  thus  not be found by CMake  you can tell CMake where to look for boost like this   SET CMAKE INCLUDE PATH   CMAKE INCLUDE PATH   C  win32libs boost   SET CMAKE LIBRARY PATH   CMAKE LIBRARY PATH   C  win32libs boost lib     Of course  those two lines have to be before the FIND PACKAGE Boost  in CMakeLists txt

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For cmake version 3 1 0-rc2 to pick up boost 1 57 specify -D boost TEST VERSIONS 1 57  cmake version 3 1 0-rc2 defaults to boost lt  1 56 0 as is seen using -DBoost DEBUG ON  cmake -D boost TEST VERSIONS 1 57 -DBoost DEBUG ON -DCMAKE BUILD TYPE Debug -DCMAKE C COMPILER clang -DCMAKE CXX COMPILER clang

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I had the same problem  and none of the above solutions worked  Actually  the file include boost version hpp could not be read  by the cmake script launched by jenkins   I had to manually change the permission of the  boost  library  even though jenkins belongs to the group  but that is another problem linked to jenkins that I could not figure out   chmod o wx   BOOST ROOT  -R   allow reading execution on the whole library  chmod g wx   BOOST ROOT  -R   this did not suffice  strangely  but it is another story I guess

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One more bit of advice for anyone trying to build CGAL in particular  with statically linked Boost   It is not enough to define Boost USE STATIC LIBS  it gets overridden by the time Boost DEBUG outputs its value   The thing to do here is to check the  Advanced  checkbox and to enable CGAL Boost USE STATIC LIBS

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There is more help available by reading the FindBoost cmake file itself  It is located in your  Modules  directory    A good start is to set Boost DEBUG 1  - this will spit out a good deal of information about where boost is looking  what it s looking for  and may help explain why it can t find it    It can also help you to figure out if it is picking up on your BOOST ROOT properly    FindBoost cmake also sometimes has problems if the exact version of boost is not listed in the Available Versions variables  You can find more about this by reading FindBoost cmake   Lastly  FindBoost cmake has had some bugs in the past  One thing you might try is to take a newer version of FindBoost cmake out of the latest version of CMake  and stick it into your project folder alongside CMakeLists txt - then even if you have an old version of boost  it will use the new version of FindBoost cmake that is in your project s folder    Good luck

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This can also happen if CMAKE FIND ROOT PATH is set as different from BOOST ROOT  I faced the same issue that in spite of setting BOOST ROOT  I was getting the error  But for cross compiling for ARM I was using Toolchain-android cmake in which I had  for some reason   set BOOST ROOT  quot  home     boost quot   set CMAKE C FLAGS  quot   CMAKE C FLAGS  --sysroot   SYSROOT  quot   set CMAKE CXX FLAGS  quot   CMAKE CXX FLAGS  --sysroot   SYSROOT  -I  SYSROOT  include libcxx quot   set CMAKE CXX LINK FLAGS  quot   CMAKE CXX LINK FLAGS  quot   set CMAKE FIND ROOT PATH  quot   SYSROOT  quot    CMAKE FIND ROOT PATH seems to be overriding BOOST ROOT which was causing the issue

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For me this error was simply because boost wasn t installed so on ubuntu  sudo apt install build-essential libboost-system-dev libboost-thread-dev libboost-program-options-dev libboost-test-dev

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Maybe  brew install boost   will help you

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I also had a similar problem and discovered that the BOOST INCLUDE DIR  BOOST LIBRARYDIR and BOOST ROOT env variables must hold absolute paths  HTH

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You can also specify the version of Boost that you would like CMake to use by passing -DBOOST INCLUDEDIR or -DBOOST ROOT pointing to the location of correct version boost headers  Example   cmake -DBOOST ROOT  opt latestboost  This will also be useful when multiple boost versions are on the same system

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I had the same problem while trying to run make for a project after installing Boost version 1 66 0 on Ubuntu Trusty64  The error message was similar to  not exactly like  this one   CMake Error at       usr local Cellar cmake 3 3 2 share cmake Modules FindBoost cmake 1245  message   Unable to find the requested Boost libraries  Boost version  0 0 0 Boost include path   usr include Detected version of Boost is too old   Requested version was 1 36  or newer   Call Stack  most recent call first   CMakeLists txt 10  FIND PACKAGE    Boost was definitely installed  but CMake couldn t detect it  After spending plenty of time tinkering with paths and environmental variables  I eventually ended up checking cmake itself for options and found the following   --check-system-vars          Find problems with variable usage in system files   So I ran the following in the directory at issue   sudo cmake --check-system-vars  which returned   Also check system files when warning about unused and uninitialized variables  -- Boost version  1 66 0 -- Found the following Boost libraries  --   system --   filesystem --   thread --   date time --   chrono --   regex --   serialization --   program options -- Found Git   usr bin git -- Configuring done -- Generating done -- Build files have been written to   home user myproject   and resolved the issue

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I struggled with this problem for a while myself   It turned out that cmake was looking for Boost library files using Boost s naming convention  in which the library name is a function of the compiler version used to build it   Our Boost libraries were built using GCC 4 9 1  and that compiler version was in fact present on our system  however  GCC 4 4 7 also happened to be installed   As it happens  cmake s FindBoost cmake script was auto-detecting the GCC 4 4 7 installation instead of the GCC 4 9 1 one  and thus was looking for Boost library files with  gcc44  in the file names  rather than  gcc49    The simple fix was to force cmake to assume that GCC 4 9 was present  by setting Boost COMPILER to  -gcc49  in CMakeLists txt   With this change  FindBoost cmake looked for  and found  my Boost library files

[boost] Cmake doesn't find Boost

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