I have successfully installed boost, compiled binaries, and built bcp. I have also been able to extract the regex library using bcp. After doing this, I found a gcc_gen.sh script and bunch of makefiles under
my_exported_boost_regex/libs/regex/build/
and used one of them to make
my_exported_boost_regex/libs/regex/build/gcc/libboost_regex-gcc-1_43.a
This is the library I use in my code and everything works great.
Now I want to do the same thing for program_options but after I extract all the files using bcp, I'm confused as to what to do next. The only file available under
my_exported_boost_program_options/libs/program_options/build/
is Jamfile.v2 and I can't for the life of me figure out how to use that to build the binary. It seems to me something is missing here.
Appreciate your help.
Thanks,
J
I finally figured out that I have to include "build" in addition to my libraries of interest in the bcp call like this:
bcp program_options build ../my_exported_boost_program_options/
This apparently places the appropriate bjam config files in the exported dir and I can then call bjam from that directory and build my exported libs.
J
you have to build boost from toplevel directory with bjam. Please refer to the Getting Started Docs
Related
Usually, open source packages will have cmake to check if some headers or libraries exists or not, I wish my own project has this same functionality.
So I wish to know if cmake provides some command to check if some ".so"/".a"/".h" files exists in the current linux system or not, if not cmake will give me some hint to install them?
How does cmake support this?
Usually one would use the find_package(ABC REQUIRED) and then refer to it in your project. This will ensure that the dependent library is installed and cmake will fail if it is not.
You can find lot's of example on how this works in your cmake installation, for example C:\Program Files\CMake\share\cmake-3.13\Modules\FindZLIB.cmake will search for the zlib library by looking in the file system for normal places where this library would be installed and if it finds it will set these variables accordingly:
# ZLIB_INCLUDE_DIRS - where to find zlib.h, etc.
# ZLIB_LIBRARIES - List of libraries when using zlib.
# ZLIB_FOUND - True if zlib found.
To achieve this header files are found using the cmake command find_path, and libraries (static and shared) are found using find_library.
To search for arbitrary library you can use find_library() command. Same task for headers is accomplished by find_file(). You can also search for executables with find_program().
As #Damian said in his naswer, many libraries provide "config" files, like FindBoost.cmake. Such libraries can be found by calling find_package(Boost) command. This command would locate and load config file and set corresponding variables.
You need to provide -config.cmake files to tell other projects where your libraries and headers are. Here, you will found what are you looking for.
I am trying to include, the boost::filesystem library into a project.
The project has to run on different architectures, so I don't want to link to the boost libraries installed on my ubuntu machine.
Most of boost is header only, so I would just have to include it and not worry about building it. But the filesystem library is NOT header only and I have to build the binaries for it.
Doing that would be easy, just pass in the header using the -I flag, and during the linking state, pass in the location to search for the binary using -L and specify the library using -l.
But I don't want to use the system headers and binaries.
So I am keeping a copy of the boost::filesystem headers within my project, using the bcp tool that boost provides.
I am able to do this, and I have a subdirectory lib/fs/boost/filesystem.
When I try to build a cpp file, dependent on filesystem, the compiler is able to find the headers and everything works.
But during the linking state. It cannot find the binary and the build fails.
So how do I build the boost::filesystem ?
1) I found the bootstrap.sh and b2 way to do it. I am not sure how to use it with the bcp tool though. I was building the library from the boost root.
But a disadvantage this this approach, is that I am complicating things. Before running my makefile, I will have to run bootstrap and b2 to get the binaries. It doesn't seem clean and I would like to avoid this.
2) Is there a makefile rule that I can use to build the boost::filesystem. The project is build using a makefile, and if I could specify a rule to build the filesystem, and then link the resulting binaries, it would be great.
I searched online and I couldn't find a makefile to build a boost library. Can you point me at where I could find such a makefile ?
The question is verbose, but I am just doing it to make sure I am not making any wrong assumptions.
Thanks a lot.
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
I want to use the boost library in a c++ project I'm doing in emacs on linux, but I am having troubles getting it to work. I don't want to actually install it on my machine. I want to be able to use the regex part of boost. I want to be able to tar my source files and send them to another computer (that is likely not to have boost installed, nor will I be able to install it) and be able to compile my project. I have tried using the make file in the regex folder and made both a .a and .so, but I can't get it to compile when linking the library and setting the includes to the boost folder (I have tried multiple folders in the boost directory as well--many of them recommended by Google, but to no avail). I keep getting a "cannot find regex/config.hpp" error.
Is there anyway to include everything in one file like a .so or .a and get it to work this way? I am okay with including the regex folder itself as well, butt...
If I were to do it this way would I have to include the whole boost folder with my project anyway? That might be doable, but I don't want my tar file to be that big.
why not just listing boost as a dependencies and let user install it ?
If not, use Boost bcp to extract regex and its dependencies to a standalone library.
At first you need to build regex library in boost. Without this library you can't use
boost.regex.
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.