I'm reasonably new to C++, and I was going to mess around with threading for my Tamagochi game, however it seems that everything says I should get Boost for that.
So my question is, how on earth do I install it?
I've found ways of using it by doing the whole "Add the path in the properties" thing. And that works, however I'm guessing that if I use that way, I wont be able to compile and release it afterwards?
I also tried using BlueGo from vertexwahn.de.
but I have no idea what it actually does. I get the whole "It compiles the libraries for you" thing but, how do I use them then?
Should they work from within VS2012 without further tweaking, or do I still need to add in the path's in properties?
I just want to use the threading from Boost, and then build the project and send to a friend.
I was going to mess around with threading...
If my reading of MSDN is correct, Visual Studio 2012 appears to support the new threading features of C++ 11. With this in mind, you don't need to install Boost. You can just use the standard <thread> header instead.
Some boost modules have to be built.
For Windows, you have to use bjam.exe to build your libraries.
And bootstrap.bat will build you bjam.exe
From your unzipped boost directory :
bootstrap.bat
bjam.exe release debug toolset=msvc address-model=32 --build-type=complete
bjam.exe release debug toolset=msvc address-model=64 --build-type=complete
And check your stage/lib for *.lib, *.dll
(You may have to clean your stage/lib directory between two bjam commands)
Then, add include directory and library directory to your VS project.
Needed libraries will be automatically linked (you do not have to tell VS to use boost thread for example), boost use pragma to find out what is needed. It doesn't work for Linux though.
As previously stated, VS2012 already handle threads, but boost is much more than that and I strongly recommand using it for whatever you want to code.
With asio from boost, you can even make thread pool : see recipe
download boost
compile boost (go to the boost directory, call
bootstrap and after this is finished call b2)
decide which part of boost to use
add the main boost directory to your include path and the lib (with default it is in stage - just search for the lib files) directory to your linker path
make sure that you link boost thread dynamically (there may be problems if you link statically)
program
Related
I'm having my first fling with the Boost libraries, and I've picked a pretty girl named Regex.
I've installed the libraries (which build automatically?) on my machine, but I'm getting the above error (cannot find -lboost_regex). I'm using Code::Blocks with MinGW, and a C++0X compiler flag.
I have
Pointed the "search directories" to the installation directory
Added the -lboost_regex flag to the linker
but no luck. Can someone help me get this working?
Update
Got things running now. I've added some further notes in an answer below, for newcomers to this problem.
(Also, changed the title of the question since it turned out to be a broader issue than when I started out.)
Here's some links and tips that can help a newcomer, from my first build experience. I built the libraries directly from the zip file. I built on MinGW and I used CodeBlocks for the IDE.
Download Boost zip, unzip somewhere (I'll call that place $boostdir)
Pretty large when unzipped, > 300MB
Add MinGW bin to PATH var
When Boost builds, it will need access to MinGW executables
Build b2.exe and bjam.exe
The documentation for Windows blithely assumes MSVC compiler is available.
If it is, you can apparently use the bootstrap.bat like the docs say.
If it's not (like mine), you'll have to build the exe files yourself, in steps 4 and 5.
In CMD, navigate to $boostdir/tools/build/v2/engine
Run build.bat mingw (will build b2.exe and bjam.exe)
Some aging basic documentation on that
Now you've got b2 and bjam custom-built according to your system spec. Navigate back up to $boostdir and get ready to start building the libraries.
Boost will make a new bin.v2 directory in the current directory.
All the libs will go in bin.v2.
This is an "intermediate" directory, for some reason
Nothing to do in this step, just some extra info :)
Run b2 toolset=gcc --build-type=complete
This takes a long time, in the neighborhood of 1 - 2 hours.
You'll know if it's working. If you think something's wrong, it's not working.
The build can use various flags
Now you're all built. Time to set up CodeBlocks.
Point your compiler to the header files
Right click your project -> Build Options -> Search Directories tab -> Compiler tab -> add $boostdir address
Boost has built a DLL for the library you want according to your current system spec. Look in the stage\lib\ directory of $boostdir
This DLL will be used later in the linker, so don't close its explorer window yet
Mine was in C:\Program Files\Boost_1_52\stage\lib\libboost_regex-mgw44-1_52.dll
I think the documentation had a smart way to do this but I haven't tried it yet
The "intermediate" directory from step #6 can be deleted now that the build is finished
Point your linker to the directory of that DLL
Right click your project -> Build Options -> Search Directories tab -> Linker tab -> add
that directory address (blah\blah\blah\stage\lib\)
Add that DLL flag to your linker settings
Mine was -lboost_regex-mgw44-1_52
Deep breath, prayers to your god, and fire up a test.
Further docs that may either help or confuse:
The Code::Blocks website has a version of this that I didn't find until I neared the end of my search. It was fairly helpful but had a few weird things. This post also is helpful.
Good luck!
I'm not sure what you mean by which build automatically. Most of the Boost libraries are header-only, but a few, such as regex, need to be compiled to a shared / static library. The compilation step is not automatic, you need to invoke the Boost build system (bjam) to do this. Of course, there are sources (BoostPro for instance) that distribute pre-built Boost binaries for various platforms.
Once that's done, you need to add the path where the libraries are present to the linker's search path. For MinGW, this option is -L"path/to/library". Boost does have directives to allow auto-linking of the required libraries, and this seems to work pretty well with MSVC, but I've never gotten it to work with MinGW. So you must also list the libraries to be linked explicitly. The Boost libraries include target and version information in the file name by default, so a typical linker command line option will look like -lboost_regex-mgw47-mt-1_51 for MinGW gcc 4.7 and Boost 1.51
According to this answer, the intended way to include non-header-only parts of Boost into a Visual Studio 2010 project require the use of bjam to build the correct libraries.
What is unclear to me is whether this is a one-time-only thing, where I just check in the lib files produced by bjam, or whether anyone who wants to build my project will from now on require not only Visual Studio but also bjam.
The project only targets Windows 32-bits, because it builds a plugin for a program that's only available in this configuration, and only needs to support the statically-linked multi-threaded CRT.
(For the record, if I just include the relevant .cpp files into the build, the compile stage succeeds, but at link stage I get a missing library error, which is apparently caused by the "auto-link" feature. Perhaps I should just disable auto-linking, if it's possible?)
You don't need bjam. Like yasouser answered, you can download the installer from boost pro, the downsides being that
you need to register though that's quick and easy
it's usually/sometimes a release or two behind the latest boost release.
What is unclear to me is whether this is a one-time-only thing, where I just check in the lib files produced by bjam, or whether anyone who wants to build my project will from now on require not only Visual Studio but also bjam.
It is a one time thing per machine. Once you have the boost binaries you don't need bjam anymore. The nice thing about the installer is that you can install some selected versions of the boost libraries + the headers (You can select VS version, single-threaded, static/dynamic, etc. on a per library basis e.g. thread, system, etc.) and then at a later point you can just run the installer again and add other binaries.
So if you're auto-linking and are missing a specific lib, just run the installer again.
FYI, you can disable boost's autolinking option by defining BOOST_ALL_NO_LIB and then manually linking in the lib versions you want.
Some of the boost libraries require you to build them as static or shared libraries and link them in your project. Either you can download the source and build it for yourself using bjam or you can install the pre-built binaries from here.
Yes this is a one time install (if you are installing from pre-built binaries or built by yourself). And those building your project will also need to do the boost install once for them to be able to build your project.
if I just include the relevant .cpp
files into the build
Direct including cpp files has many drawbacks. The only reason of borrowing .cpp files I can imagine is to allow build the project on other PCs without installing boost there. But I think it can be solved by distributing particular boost .lib files as well.
I'm trying setup a subset of boost and get it properly compiled using bjam, however I'm not getting the result I'm looking for. I'm working on windows using boost 1.37.0.
Let's say I want the libraries smart_ptr and filesystem built/installed. I intentionally chose a header only library and one library needing to compile a library. I want them to be built into a directory structure similar to the one I would get if I built a complete boost installation with bjam (i.e not specifying any --with-libraryX) but of course without all the libraries I'm not interested in.
My first approach was to use the --with-filesystem --with-smart_ptr in bjam, however it seemed like it didn't recognize smart_ptr (I tried smartptr and smart-ptr without success). I guess this is because it's a header only library.
When I removed it and only had --with-filesystem it seemed to copy ALL libraries header files to the install path and only build the libraries for filesystem. The library building behavior was the one I hoped for, but I got tons of header files for libraries I'm not interested in installed in my boost directory.
My second approach was to use bcp to copy the relevant projects. This did work out in the sense that I only got the projects I cared about (and their dependencies). However they didn't provide any make files for building the libraries that was copied. This means I would need to setup projects files for all the libraries that are not header only and manually build them.
So my question is basically, is there a way of selectively building boost that only copies the headers for the libraries I'm interested in and only building library files for the non header only libraries I'm interested in (and the boost libraries they are dependent on course)?
There are probably tons of manual/scripting based solutions for this, but if I could get something running only using bjam would be way more useful for me since adding new libraries or upgrading to a new boost version would be very simple.
EDIT:
Added the complete command line for the first approach:
bjam install --prefix=c:\temp\boostsmall
--build-dir=C:\temp\boostsmalltemp --layout=system
--with-filesystem variant=debug link=static threading=multi
runtime-link=static
Changed scoped_ptr to smart_ptr
Solved it.
The bcp solution had make files for the projects, however I needed to copy the tools directory and the root of the boost directory to the place I copied all my libs to get things up running.
Great question! This is an issue I have recently managed to figure out, I think.
I already had the full Boost libraries installed, including the ones requiring separate compilation.
I managed to create a subset of the Boost libraries (regex) for a particular application I was working on using the following steps:
First ensure the bcp executable is installed in the first place. In your Boost root folder, navigate to the tools/bcp folder and run the bjam.exe in here. For me this created the bcp executable in [Boost path]\bin.v2\tools\bcp\msvc-10.0\release\link-static directory:
Then create the folder where you would like the Boost subset to reside. This might already be a folder for a Visual Studio project you are working on.
Run the bcp exectubale you created, making sure to include the libraries you wish to include, as well as the location of the boost root directory and the destination folder. Observe how the required Boost components (eg for regex) have been included in your destination folder.
bcp.exe regex --boost="C:\Program Files\boost_1_55_0\boost_1_55_0" C:\Projects\RegexProject\BoostLite
In your Visual Studio project set the Additional Include Directories and Libraries to point to the 'Boost lite' folder that was created.
One final thing - which I think is described previously - I needed to go to my regular Boost folder setup and copy the required stage/lib folder containing all the lib files needed for the subset version and copy them here, just a few regex-related lib files in my case.
I found that this worked for me. Any feedback from other persons experiences would be appreciated.
A blog posting describing the same thing can be found here.
I can't find a pre-built set of MSVC++ libs for Boost 1.37.0, only the source. I don't understand how their weird build system works... are there any places I can find a download of a visual studio project or something?
The BoostPro Computing folks maintain the Boost installer for Windows but it usually take a few weeks for them to put new versions online. It's not yet up for 1.37.
There's no Visual Studio solution (remember, Boost targets many platforms) though there is an effort to also support building Boost with CMake. I'm not sure how far along they got for 1.37 but I believe it's still early days for this process.
However the standard build system isn't that weird! Start by downloading bjam for your platform (look for a suffix of 'ntx86' for Windows) and installing it somewhere in your path (C:/Windows/System32). Then download the source, uncompress it and run the build system from the command line. It'll look something like this for Visual Studio users:
bjam --build-dir="C:\boostsource" --toolset=msvc --build-type=complete stage
This is lifted pretty much from the Getting Started Guide which goes into much more detail. The build-dir is not needed if you're current directory is the root of the source.
After waiting a couple of hours for everything to build ('complete' means that it'll build debug, release, single/multi threaded, static/dynamic, static/dynamic linking to the runtimes - and combinations) you'll end up with all of the libs in a 'stage/lib' directory.
Finally you need to tell Visual Studio where to find the headers and libs. Go to Tools->Options->Projects and Solutions->VC++ Directories. Add an entry for "Include files" (like "C:\boostsource"). Add an entry for "Library files" ("C:\boostsource\stage\lib").
I've got a build of 1.37 (VC 7.1, 8, 9) on my website, help yourself.
http://boost.teeks99.com/
(Update... 1.38 is up there as well)
(Another Update, 1.39 is now there)
(1.40 is up)
(1.41 is up, a bit late)
It seems complicated, but building Boost is really not that bad. First you need to download the bjam tool (SourceForge is a good source). Make sure bjam.exe is in a directory in your PATH.
Go the the root of your unzipped Boost download (e.g. C:\Boost_1_37_0)
Type bjam --help to get a list of all your build options.
I use the following command to build everything, you can customize it to suit your needs:
bjam --prefix=C:\boost --build-dir=C:\build --build-type=complete install
The results will be placed in C:\boost and you can delete C:\build.
Building it isn't difficult.
They have a fairly good expanaltion of the default process here:
http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_37_0/more/getting_started/windows.html#or-build-binaries-from-source
Download bjam (from sourceforge, there are links from the boost website), as well as the boost sources, make sure bjam is accessible from the boost dir, cd to the boost dir, and run something like the following:
bjam --build-dir= --prefix-dir= --toolset=msvc --build-type=complete install
where is an temp dir where it can store intermediate files, and is the final install location. There are all sorts of other options you can play around with, and not all of them are documented very well, but the basics are fairly simple.
For more help, you can run bjam --help from the boost source dir.
My development shop has put together a fairly useful Python-based test suite, and we'd like to test some Linux-based C++ code with it. We've gotten the test project they ship with Boost to compile (type 'bjam' in the directory and it works), but we're having issues with our actual project.
Building the boost libraries and bjam from source (v1.35.0), when I run bjam I get a .so in the bin/gcc-4.1.2/debug directory. I run python and "import " and I get:
ImportError: libboost_python-gcc41-d-1_35.so.1.35.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Looking in the library directory, I have the following:
libboost_python-gcc41-mt-1_35.so libboost_python-gcc41-mt-1_35.so.1.35.0 libboost_python-gcc41-mt.so
Obviously I need the -d instead of the -mt libraries, or to point at the -mt libraries instead of -d, but I can't figure out how to make my Jamroot file do that.
When I install Debian Etch's versions of the libraries, I get "No Jamfile in /usr/include" - and there's a debian bug that says they left out the system-level jamfile.
I'm more hopeful about getting it working from source, so if anyone has any suggestions to resolve the library issues, I'd like to hear them.
Response to answer 1: Thanks for the tip. So, do you know how I'd go about getting it to use the MT libraries instead? It appears to be more of a problem with bjam or the Jamfile I am using thinking I am in debug mode, even though I can't find any flags for that. While I know how to include specific libraries in a call to GCC, I don't see a way to configure that from the Boost end.
If you want to build the debug variants of the boost libraries as well, you have to invoke bjam with the option --build-type=complete.
On Debian, you get the debug Python interpreter in the python2.x-dbg packages. Debug builds of the Boost libraries are in libboost1.xy-dbg, if you want to use the system Boost.
Found the solution! Boost builds a debug build by default. Typing "bjam release" builds the release configuration. (This isn't listed in any documentation anywhere, as far as I can tell.) Note that this is not the same as changing your build-type to release, as that doesn't build a release configuration. Doing a 'complete' build as Torsten suggests also does not stop it from building only a debug version.
It's also worth noting that the -d libraries were in <boost-version>/bin.v2/libs/python/build/<gcc version>/debug/ and the release libraries were in <gcc-version>/release, and not installed into the top-level 'libs' directory.
Thanks for the other suggestions!
One important Point: -d means debug of course, and should only be linked to a debug build of your project and can only be used with a debug build of python (OR NOT, SEE BELOW). If you try to link a debug lib to a non-debug build, or you try to import a debug pyd into a non-debug python, bad things will happen.
mt means multi-threaded and is orthogonal to d. You probably want to use a mt non-d for your project.
I am afraid I don't know how to tell gcc what to link against (I have been using Visual Studio). One thing to try:
man gcc
Somewhere that should tell you how to force specific libs on the linker.
EDIT: Actually you can import a debug version of you project into a non-debug build of python. Wherever you included python.h, include boost/python/detail/wrap_python.hpp instead.