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

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()