Error running boost bcp tool: "The Boost path appears to have been incorrectly set"

Question

Trying to run Boost's bcp tool, I get the following error:

**** exception(205): std::runtime_error: The Boost path appears to have been incorrectly set: could not find boost/version.hpp in 
******** errors detected; see standard output for details ********

The error message appears exactly as above, with the path it tries to search empty. I have tried solving it by setting the BOOST_ROOT environment variable, but the same error comes back, and the searched path is still empty. The system is Mac OS X 10.9.1.

Answer 1

OK, I solved it by adding the following command line option:

--boost=/path/to/boost_directory

Naively I had assumed bcp would find this directory in an environment variable that was supposed to be set, because most of the examples in the documentation didn't include the option. Now I see in the docs that if the option is not specified, "then the current path is assumed to be the root directory of the Boost tree".

http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_55_0/tools/bcp/doc/html/index.html#bcp.syntax.options