Why autoconf isn't detecting boost properly?

Question

I am using autoconf to detect boost libraries, with the support of the autoconf-archive macros and they work fine with system-wide boost libraries, but fail if I manually compile boost in my home directory:

sb@stephane:~/devel/spectra2$ ./configure --with-boost=/home/sb/local/
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for a thread-safe mkdir -p... /bin/mkdir -p
checking for gawk... no
checking for mawk... mawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking build system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking host system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking for style of include used by make... GNU
checking for gcc... gcc
checking for C compiler default output file name... a.out
checking whether the C compiler works... yes
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for suffix of executables... 
checking for suffix of object files... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for gcc option to accept ISO C89... none needed
checking dependency style of gcc... gcc3
checking for library containing strerror... none required
checking for g++... g++
checking whether we are using the GNU C++ compiler... yes
checking whether g++ accepts -g... yes
checking dependency style of g++... gcc3
checking for boostlib >= 1.31.0... yes
checking whether the Boost::Program_Options library is available... yes
checking for exit in -lboost_program_options... yes
checking whether the Boost::Filesystem library is available... yes
checking for exit in -lboost_filesystem... no
checking for exit in -lboost_filesystem... (cached) no
checking for exit in -lboost_filesystem... (cached) no
configure: error: Could not link against boost_filesystem !

As you can see, it detects some libraries fine, but it fails with boost-filesystem. These are the contents of ~/local/lib:

sb@stephane:~$ ls -1 /home/sb/local/lib/
libboost_filesystem.a
libboost_filesystem.so
libboost_filesystem.so.1.42.0
libboost_program_options.a
libboost_program_options.so
libboost_program_options.so.1.42.0
libboost_system.a
libboost_system.so
libboost_system.so.1.42.0
libboost_thread.a
libboost_thread.so
libboost_thread.so.1.42.0

So the library is there. I tried with both boost-1.39 and boost-1.42 with no different result, any idea why is this happening? Did I forget about something?

Answer 1

Since boost-1.39 libboost_filesystem depends on libboost_system. Before 1.39 you could only link to boost_filesystem, in later versions you have to link to both of them.

Maybe it has something to do with your error.

Answer 2

I've found boost.m4 to be much more robust than the Boost macros available from the Autoconf Macro Archive. You may have good luck simply migrating to boost.m4.