CODEWITHSUNDEEP
boostcmakeanaconda
Peter
Peter

Reputation: 3164

Make cmake's find_package(Boost ...) find headers inside conda environment

I'm trying to build a project on Linux via CMake that depends on Boost. The project's CMakeLists.txt contains the following line:

find_package(Boost 1.46 REQUIRED COMPONENTS system thread filesystem)

For reproducibility reasons I have installed the required Boost headers via conda install libboost so that they are located under ~/anaconda3/envs/.../include/boost instead of /usr/local/include. Not when I run cmake, I receive an error along the lines of:

CMake Warning at /usr/share/cmake-3.7/Modules/FindBoost.cmake:761 (message):
  Imported targets not available for Boost version
Call Stack (most recent call first):
  /usr/share/cmake-3.7/Modules/FindBoost.cmake:865 (_Boost_COMPONENT_DEPENDENCIES)
  /usr/share/cmake-3.7/Modules/FindBoost.cmake:1470 (_Boost_MISSING_DEPENDENCIES)
  cmake/Dependencies.cmake:5 (find_package)
  CMakeLists.txt:43 (include)

What can I do to make CMake find my Boost headers?

Upvotes: 7

Views: 4902

Answers (2)

CraigDavid
CraigDavid

Reputation: 1246

This works for me:

cmake .. -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=$CONDA_PREFIX

This works because CMake has a well defined search order that it follows when looking for library packages. CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH tells CMake to search in a user specified directory. $CONDA_PREFIX is an environment variable set by Anaconda when you activate your environment. These two tools were designed to work together in this way.

Upvotes: 5

Stanley F.
Stanley F.

Reputation: 1973

To give CMake a hint, where Boost is installed on your system, you have to set the BOOST_ROOT variable accordingly. In your example, this seems to be

BOOST_ROOT=~/anaconda3/envs/.../

Note that you have to specify the parent directory of the lib and include folders. The file tree should look like the following:

BOOST_ROOT/
|-- include/
|   |-- boost/
|   |   |-- *.hpp
|   |   `-- ...
|   `-- ...
`-- lib/
    |-- libboost_*.so
    `-- ...

Another note: You are writing about headers only, but keep in mind that those three components you want to use are not header-only, but are actual libraries that your program has to be linked against.

Upvotes: 4

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