FindBoost

Changed in version 3.30: This module is available only if policy CMP0167 is not set to NEW. Port projects to upstream Boost's BoostConfig.cmake package configuration file, for which find_package(Boost) now searches.

Find Boost include dirs and libraries

Use this module by invoking find_package() with the form:

find_package(Boost
  [version] [EXACT]      # Minimum or EXACT version e.g. 1.67.0
  [REQUIRED]             # Fail with error if Boost is not found
  [COMPONENTS <libs>...] # Boost libraries by their canonical name
                         # e.g. "date_time" for "libboost_date_time"
  [OPTIONAL_COMPONENTS <libs>...]
                         # Optional Boost libraries by their canonical name)
  )                      # e.g. "date_time" for "libboost_date_time"

This module finds headers and requested component libraries OR a CMake package configuration file provided by a "Boost CMake" build. For the latter case skip to the Boost CMake section below.

Added in version 3.7: bzip2 and zlib components (Windows only).

Added in version 3.11: The OPTIONAL_COMPONENTS option.

Added in version 3.13: stacktrace_* components.

Added in version 3.19: bzip2 and zlib components on all platforms.

Result Variables

This module defines the following variables:

Boost_FOUND

True if headers and requested libraries were found.

Boost_INCLUDE_DIRS

Boost include directories.

Boost_LIBRARY_DIRS

Link directories for Boost libraries.

Boost_LIBRARIES

Boost component libraries to be linked.

Boost_<COMPONENT>_FOUND

True if component <COMPONENT> was found (<COMPONENT> name is upper-case).

Boost_<COMPONENT>_LIBRARY

Libraries to link for component <COMPONENT> (may include target_link_libraries() debug/optimized keywords).

Boost_VERSION_MACRO

BOOST_VERSION value from boost/version.hpp.

Boost_VERSION_STRING

Boost version number in X.Y.Z format.

Boost_VERSION

Boost version number in X.Y.Z format (same as Boost_VERSION_STRING).

Changed in version 3.15: In previous CMake versions, this variable used the raw version string from the Boost header (same as Boost_VERSION_MACRO). See policy CMP0093.

Boost_LIB_VERSION

Version string appended to library filenames.

Boost_VERSION_MAJOR, Boost_MAJOR_VERSION

Boost major version number (X in X.Y.Z).

Boost_VERSION_MINOR, Boost_MINOR_VERSION

Boost minor version number (Y in X.Y.Z).

Boost_VERSION_PATCH, Boost_SUBMINOR_VERSION

Boost subminor version number (Z in X.Y.Z).

Boost_VERSION_COUNT

Amount of version components (3).

Boost_LIB_DIAGNOSTIC_DEFINITIONS (Windows-specific)

Pass to add_definitions() to have diagnostic information about Boost's automatic linking displayed during compilation

Added in version 3.15: The Boost_VERSION_<PART> variables.

Cache variables

Search results are saved persistently in CMake cache entries:

Boost_INCLUDE_DIR

Directory containing Boost headers.

Boost_LIBRARY_DIR_RELEASE

Directory containing release Boost libraries.

Boost_LIBRARY_DIR_DEBUG

Directory containing debug Boost libraries.

Boost_<COMPONENT>_LIBRARY_DEBUG

Component <COMPONENT> library debug variant.

Boost_<COMPONENT>_LIBRARY_RELEASE

Component <COMPONENT> library release variant.

Added in version 3.3: Per-configuration variables Boost_LIBRARY_DIR_RELEASE and Boost_LIBRARY_DIR_DEBUG.

Hints

This module reads hints about search locations from variables:

BOOST_ROOT, BOOSTROOT

Preferred installation prefix.

BOOST_INCLUDEDIR

Preferred include directory e.g. <prefix>/include.

BOOST_LIBRARYDIR

Preferred library directory e.g. <prefix>/lib.

Boost_NO_SYSTEM_PATHS

Set to ON to disable searching in locations not specified by these hint variables. Default is OFF.

Boost_ADDITIONAL_VERSIONS

List of Boost versions not known to this module. (Boost install locations may contain the version).

Users may set these hints or results as CACHE entries. Projects should not read these entries directly but instead use the above result variables. Note that some hint names start in upper-case BOOST. One may specify these as environment variables if they are not specified as CMake variables or cache entries.

This module first searches for the Boost header files using the above hint variables (excluding BOOST_LIBRARYDIR) and saves the result in Boost_INCLUDE_DIR. Then it searches for requested component libraries using the above hints (excluding BOOST_INCLUDEDIR and Boost_ADDITIONAL_VERSIONS), "lib" directories near Boost_INCLUDE_DIR, and the library name configuration settings below. It saves the library directories in Boost_LIBRARY_DIR_DEBUG and Boost_LIBRARY_DIR_RELEASE and individual library locations in Boost_<COMPONENT>_LIBRARY_DEBUG and Boost_<COMPONENT>_LIBRARY_RELEASE. When one changes settings used by previous searches in the same build tree (excluding environment variables) this module discards previous search results affected by the changes and searches again.

Imported Targets

Added in version 3.5.

This module defines the following IMPORTED targets:

Boost::boost

Target for header-only dependencies. (Boost include directory).

Boost::headers

Added in version 3.15: Alias for Boost::boost.

Boost::<component>

Target for specific component dependency (shared or static library); <component> name is lower-case.

Boost::diagnostic_definitions

Interface target to enable diagnostic information about Boost's automatic linking during compilation (adds -DBOOST_LIB_DIAGNOSTIC).

Boost::disable_autolinking

Interface target to disable automatic linking with MSVC (adds -DBOOST_ALL_NO_LIB).

Boost::dynamic_linking

Interface target to enable dynamic linking with MSVC (adds -DBOOST_ALL_DYN_LINK).

Implicit dependencies such as Boost::filesystem requiring Boost::system will be automatically detected and satisfied, even if system is not specified when using find_package() and if Boost::system is not added to target_link_libraries(). If using Boost::thread, then Threads::Threads will also be added automatically.

It is important to note that the imported targets behave differently than variables created by this module: multiple calls to find_package(Boost) in the same directory or sub-directories with different options (e.g. static or shared) will not override the values of the targets created by the first call.

Other Variables

Boost libraries come in many variants encoded in their file name. Users or projects may tell this module which variant to find by setting variables:

Boost_USE_DEBUG_LIBS

Added in version 3.10.

Set to ON or OFF to specify whether to search and use the debug libraries. Default is ON.

Boost_USE_RELEASE_LIBS

Added in version 3.10.

Set to ON or OFF to specify whether to search and use the release libraries. Default is ON.

Boost_USE_MULTITHREADED

Set to OFF to use the non-multithreaded libraries ("mt" tag). Default is ON.

Boost_USE_STATIC_LIBS

Set to ON to force the use of the static libraries. Default is OFF.

Boost_USE_STATIC_RUNTIME

Set to ON or OFF to specify whether to use libraries linked statically to the C++ runtime ("s" tag). Default is platform dependent.

Boost_USE_DEBUG_RUNTIME

Set to ON or OFF to specify whether to use libraries linked to the MS debug C++ runtime ("g" tag). Default is ON.

Boost_USE_DEBUG_PYTHON

Set to ON to use libraries compiled with a debug Python build ("y" tag). Default is OFF.

Boost_USE_STLPORT

Set to ON to use libraries compiled with STLPort ("p" tag). Default is OFF.

Boost_USE_STLPORT_DEPRECATED_NATIVE_IOSTREAMS

Set to ON to use libraries compiled with STLPort deprecated "native iostreams" ("n" tag). Default is OFF.

Boost_COMPILER

Set to the compiler-specific library suffix (e.g. -gcc43). Default is auto-computed for the C++ compiler in use.

Changed in version 3.9: A list may be used if multiple compatible suffixes should be tested for, in decreasing order of preference.

Boost_LIB_PREFIX

Added in version 3.18.

Set to the platform-specific library name prefix (e.g. lib) used by Boost static libs. This is needed only on platforms where CMake does not know the prefix by default.

Boost_ARCHITECTURE

Added in version 3.13.

Set to the architecture-specific library suffix (e.g. -x64). Default is auto-computed for the C++ compiler in use.

Boost_THREADAPI

Suffix for thread component library name, such as pthread or win32. Names with and without this suffix will both be tried.

Boost_NAMESPACE

Alternate namespace used to build boost with e.g. if set to myboost, will search for myboost_thread instead of boost_thread.

Other variables one may set to control this module are:

Boost_DEBUG

Set to ON to enable debug output from FindBoost. Please enable this before filing any bug report.

Boost_REALPATH

Set to ON to resolve symlinks for discovered libraries to assist with packaging. For example, the "system" component library may be resolved to /usr/lib/libboost_system.so.1.67.0 instead of /usr/lib/libboost_system.so. This does not affect linking and should not be enabled unless the user needs this information.

Boost_LIBRARY_DIR

Default value for Boost_LIBRARY_DIR_RELEASE and Boost_LIBRARY_DIR_DEBUG.

Boost_NO_WARN_NEW_VERSIONS

Added in version 3.20.

Set to ON to suppress the warning about unknown dependencies for new Boost versions.

On Visual Studio and Borland compilers Boost headers request automatic linking to corresponding libraries. This requires matching libraries to be linked explicitly or available in the link library search path. In this case setting Boost_USE_STATIC_LIBS to OFF may not achieve dynamic linking. Boost automatic linking typically requests static libraries with a few exceptions (such as Boost.Python). Use:

add_definitions(${Boost_LIB_DIAGNOSTIC_DEFINITIONS})

to ask Boost to report information about automatic linking requests.

Examples

Find Boost headers only:

find_package(Boost 1.36.0)
if(Boost_FOUND)
  include_directories(${Boost_INCLUDE_DIRS})
  add_executable(foo foo.cc)
endif()

Find Boost libraries and use imported targets:

find_package(Boost 1.56 REQUIRED COMPONENTS
             date_time filesystem iostreams)
add_executable(foo foo.cc)
target_link_libraries(foo Boost::date_time Boost::filesystem
                          Boost::iostreams)

Find Boost Python 3.6 libraries and use imported targets:

find_package(Boost 1.67 REQUIRED COMPONENTS
             python36 numpy36)
add_executable(foo foo.cc)
target_link_libraries(foo Boost::python36 Boost::numpy36)

Find Boost headers and some static (release only) libraries:

set(Boost_USE_STATIC_LIBS        ON)  # only find static libs
set(Boost_USE_DEBUG_LIBS        OFF)  # ignore debug libs and
set(Boost_USE_RELEASE_LIBS       ON)  # only find release libs
set(Boost_USE_MULTITHREADED      ON)
set(Boost_USE_STATIC_RUNTIME    OFF)
find_package(Boost 1.66.0 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()

Boost CMake

If Boost was built using the boost-cmake project or from Boost 1.70.0 on it provides a package configuration file for use with find_package's config mode. This module looks for the package configuration file called BoostConfig.cmake or boost-config.cmake and stores the result in CACHE entry Boost_DIR. If found, the package configuration file is loaded and this module returns with no further action. See documentation of the Boost CMake package configuration for details on what it provides.

Set Boost_NO_BOOST_CMAKE to ON, to disable the search for boost-cmake.