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?

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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++

Answer 4

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!

Answer 5

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.

Answer 6

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.