Build Boost Framework for iOS & OSX

Using Xcode5 (armv7, armv7s, arm64, i386, x86_64)

Boost Source

Script does not yet support downloading the source code, so you have to get it manually.

• boost downloads
• 1.53.0
• 1.54.0

The script is expecting bz2 tarball. Put the tarball in the same folder with boost.sh.

Make sure you keep the tarball name unchanged, so it is like boost_1_53_0.tar.bz2.

Build

Use boost.sh to build boost framework. Run boost.sh -h to get help message.

Modify BOOST_LIBS with list of libraries that you need.

Examples:

# clean build version 1.53.0 for ios and osx with c++11
./boost.sh clean --with-c++11 -v 1.53.0

# build version 1.54.0 for ios and osx without c++11, no clean
./boost.sh --version 1.54.0

Troubleshooting

Undefined symbols link error

If you use libraries like serialization you might see link errors in Xcode 5 especially when the framework was built using --with-c++11 flag.

Undefined symbols for architecture i386:
"std::__1::__vector_base_common<true>::__throw_length_error() const", referenced from:
void std::__1::vector<boost::archive::detail::basic_iarchive_impl::cobject_id, std::__1::allocator<boost::archive::detail::basic_iarchive_impl::cobject_id> >::__push_back_slow_path<boost::archive::detail::basic_iarchive_impl::cobject_id>(boost::archive::detail::basic_iarchive_impl::cobject_id&&) in boost(libboost_serialization_basic_iarchive.o)

You have to change your project or target build settings.

Under Apple LLVM 5.0 - Language - C++ make the following changes

• C++ Language Dialect set to C++11 [-std=c++11]
• C++ Standard Library set to libc++ (LLVM C++ standard library with C++11 support)

Parse errors when including boost/type_traits.hpp

If you happen to include <boost/type_traits.hpp> header file, you may see compile errors like this

Unexpected member name of ';' after declaration specifiers

To fix this problem, include the following line in your porject ***-Prefix.pch file.

#define __ASSERT_MACROS_DEFINE_VERSIONS_WITHOUT_UNDERSCORES 0

Header-Only Libraries

Most of the boost libraries are header-only, meaning you only need to include header files to make them work. However, there is a list of libraries that need to be built for your target platform. Check the link above and modify BOOST_LIBS in boost.sh to include or exclude the libraries for your project.

Notes and Changes

ar for Simulator Dev Tools

In Xcode 5 there's no ar excutable in SIM_DEV_DIR so using /usr/bin/ar instead.

Demo

Check out this demo project for some examples.

Why not Using Cocoapods?

I tried to use cocoapods spec for boost. However, there's a number of things that made me to switch to using framework instead.

• It doesn't include all the subspecs you might need for development
• It takes really long time to update every time you run pod update or pod install (given that you have modified Podfile)
  • The tarball is downloaded (50+ mb)
  • The tarball is unpacked
• There's podspec for 1.51.0 only
• You can't use the Pod if you need libraries like serialization
  • serialization has to be linked as a library, it doesn't work like the rest of the boost libraries by just including hpp headers inline. It needs to be compiled for your target platform.

References and Attribution

This repo is practially a fork of https://github.com/wuhao5/boost. Only this one does not contain boost source code, thus is more lightweight.

The script mentioned above in it's turn is based on great work by Pete Goodliffe

• https://gitorious.org/boostoniphone
• http://goodliffe.blogspot.com.au/2010/09/building-boost-framework-for-ios-iphone.html
• http://goodliffe.blogspot.com.au/2009/12/boost-on-iphone.html

And lots of contributions by other people.