How to include external library (boost) into CLion C++ project with CMake? - c++

Question

I have the following setup for C++ development:
OS X Yosemite
CLion 140.2310.6 (a cross-plattform C/C++-IDE by JetBrains using CMake as build system)
installed boost via brew install boost into /usr/local/Cellar/boost/
Now, my goal is to setup a simple project and include the boost library. I defined just one test.cpp file that looks like this:
#include <iostream>
#include <boost>
using namespace std;
int test() {
cout << "Hello, World!" << endl;
return 0;
}
My CMakeLists.txt file looks like this:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8.4)
project(MyProject)
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -std=c++11")
include_directories("/usr/local/Cellar/boost/1.57.0/include/boost")
set(SOURCE_FILES main.cpp ./test.cpp)
add_executable(MyProject ${SOURCE_FILES})
When I build the project, I get the following error:
/Users/nburk/Documents/uni/master/master_thesis/MyProject/test.cpp:2:10:
fatal error: 'boost' file not found
make[3]: *** [CMakeFiles/MyProject.dir/test.cpp.o] Error 1
make[2]: *** [CMakeFiles/MyProject.dir/all] Error 2
make[1]: *** [CMakeFiles/MyProject.dir/rule] Error 2
make: *** [MyProject] Error 2
I played around with adjusting paths here and there and also using add_library and target_link_libraries, none of which made the project build successfully.
Can someone point into the right direction how to make sure I can include boosts functionality into my CLion C++ project?
Update:
Thanks to #Waxo's answer I used the following code in my CMakeLists.txt file which:
set(Boost_INCLUDE_DIR /usr/local/Cellar/boost/1.57.0)
set(Boost_LIBRARY_DIR /usr/local/Cellar/boost/1.57.0/lib)
find_package(Boost COMPONENTS system filesystem REQUIRED)
include_directories(${Boost_INCLUDE_DIR})
I now got past the file not found-error, but instead I get the following:
CMake Error at /Applications/CLion
EAP.app/Contents/bin/cmake/share/cmake-3.1/Modules/FindBoost.cmake:685
(file):
file STRINGS file "/usr/local/Cellar/boost/1.57.0/boost/version.hpp" cannot be read.
Call Stack (most recent call first): CMakeLists.txt:11
(find_package)
Any ideas what I am still missing? The referred line (685) in FindBoost.cmake is:
file(STRINGS "${Boost_INCLUDE_DIR}/boost/version.hpp" _boost_VERSION_HPP_CONTENTS REGEX "#define BOOST_(LIB_)?VERSION ")

Answer 1

After spending the whole afternoon on the issue, I solved it myself. It was a rather stupid mistake and all the hints in #Waxo's answer were really helpful.
The reason why it wasn't working for me that I wrote #include <boost> within my test.cpp-file, which apparently is just wrong. Instead, you need to refer directly to the header files that you actually want to include, so you should rather write e.g. #include <boost/thread.hpp>.
After all, a short sequence of statements should be enough to successfully (and platform-independently) include boost into a CMake project:
find_package(Boost 1.57.0 COMPONENTS system filesystem REQUIRED)
include_directories(${Boost_INCLUDE_DIRS})
add_executable(BoostTest main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(BoostTest ${Boost_LIBRARIES})
These lines are doing the magic here. For reference, here is a complete CMakeLists.txt file that I used for debugging in a separate command line project:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8.4)
project(BoostTest)
message(STATUS "start running cmake...")
find_package(Boost 1.57.0 COMPONENTS system filesystem REQUIRED)
if(Boost_FOUND)
message(STATUS "Boost_INCLUDE_DIRS: ${Boost_INCLUDE_DIRS}")
message(STATUS "Boost_LIBRARIES: ${Boost_LIBRARIES}")
message(STATUS "Boost_VERSION: ${Boost_VERSION}")
include_directories(${Boost_INCLUDE_DIRS})
endif()
add_executable(BoostTest main.cpp)
if(Boost_FOUND)
target_link_libraries(BoostTest ${Boost_LIBRARIES})
endif()

Answer 2

Try using CMake find_package(Boost)
src : http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.0/module/FindBoost.html
It works better and CMake is made for cross compilation and giving an absolute path is not good in a CMake project.
Edit:
Look at this one too : How to link C++ program with Boost using CMake
Because you don't link actually the boost library to your executable.
CMake with boost usually looks like that :
set(Boost_USE_STATIC_LIBS ON) # only find static libs
set(Boost_USE_MULTITHREADED ON)
set(Boost_USE_STATIC_RUNTIME OFF)
find_package(Boost 1.57.0 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()

Answer 3

I couldn't find boost library using find_package() of clion. So my solution is download to the latest version boost from the following site:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/boost/files/boost/
After that, extract it and navigate to that folder in CMakeList.txt to include boost library.
include_directories("/path_to_external_library")
In my case, I use linux and so I put it under /usr/share/.
include_directories("/usr/share/boost_1_66_0")