[boost] Cmake doesn't find Boost

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?

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

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<=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++

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!

Maybe

brew install boost

will help you.

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 "/home/.../boost")
set(CMAKE_C_FLAGS "${CMAKE_C_FLAGS} --sysroot=${SYSROOT}")
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} --sysroot=${SYSROOT} -I${SYSROOT}/include/libcxx")
set(CMAKE_CXX_LINK_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_LINK_FLAGS}")
set(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH "${SYSROOT}")

CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH seems to be overriding BOOST_ROOT which was causing the issue.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.