How to Easily Link Boost Libraries to Your C Project Using CMake?

How to Easily Link a C Program with Boost Using CMake

Linking your C program with the Boost library can be a daunting task, especially on Ubuntu. However, CMake offers a straightforward solution to simplify this process.

The Problem

When attempting to link your program, you may encounter an error such as:

main.cpp:(.text+0x3b): undefined reference to `boost::program_options::options_description::m_default_line_length'

This error indicates that your program cannot find the necessary Boost headers.

The Solution

To resolve this issue, follow these steps:

target_link_libraries(
my_target_file
${Boost_PROGRAM_OPTIONS_LIBRARY}
)

This CMake command links your target file to the appropriate Boost library.

FindBoost.cmake

Alternatively, you can use CMake's FindBoost.cmake module to automatically locate and integrate Boost into your project:

FIND_PACKAGE( Boost 1.40 COMPONENTS program_options REQUIRED )
INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES( ${Boost_INCLUDE_DIR} )

ADD_EXECUTABLE( anyExecutable myMain.cpp )

TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES( anyExecutable LINK_PUBLIC ${Boost_LIBRARIES} )

Documentation

For more detailed information and examples:

• [Official Boost documentation for FindBoost.cmake](https://cmake.org/Wiki/Boost)
• [FindBoost.cmake源码](https://github.com/Kitware/CMake/blob/master/Modules/FindBoost.cmake)

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