Question

I am trying to install Boost so I can use it along with MinGW and Code Blocks. I’m running Code Blocks 10.05 and the version of MinGW that comes with the download on the Codeblocks website. I’ve downloaded Boost 1.49.0 from http://www.boost.org/. I’ve seen several different guides for installing Boost(building from source that is). However, none of them seem to play out nicely at all, with me getting stuck in the initial steps. I’ve attempted to run bootstrap.bat in the base directory /boost_1_49_0 and also in /boost_1_49_0/tools/build/v2.

Both yield a popup that tells me I’m missing mspdb100.dll. Do I need to get this dll somehow? Am I following the wrong procedure to install this?

Answer 1

When this error occurs, bootstrap.bat doesn’t build the error log that it says so that is essentially useless. However, uninstalling Microsoft Visual C++ cause the dll error to disappear and the log file will generate. It shows that it attempts use msvc to build the project instead of gcc. So unlike the direction given in several guides, you must specify the toolkit at this point:

bootstrap.bat gcc

Then it will prompt you to run a file called b2 that can be built with the options (among others).

b2 --build-dir=C:\exampledir toolset=gcc

It appears in order for boost to be used that you have to explicitly add the files in <builddir>\boost\bin.v1\libs\system. Otherwise the you get an error like:

In function `_static_initialization_and_destruction_0':|
C:\removed\boost_1_49_0\boost\system\error_code.hpp|214|undefined reference to `boost::system::generic_category()'|
C:\removed\system\error_code.hpp|215|undefined reference to `boost::system::generic_category()'|
C:\removed\boost_1_49_0\boost\system\error_code.hpp|216|undefined reference to `boost::system::system_category()'|

The linker options can be found in Code Blocks by going to Project -> Build Options -> Linker Settings -> Add. Adding these libraries explicitly seems to be necessary even if you add the build directory to the linker Search Directories.