Share my experience Boost 1.55 on OSX 10.10 Yosemite

[ZhengRui]

Today I have to build Boost-for-Android because it's needed in this project "sh1r0/caffe-android-lib".

My system is OSX 10.10 Yosemite, My Android NDK version is "r10e", after clone this project, I download the "boost_1_55_0.tar.bz2" and put it inside Boost-for-Android folder

cd Boost-for-Android

basically i need to compile part of boost for android-caffe project with this command:

./build-android.sh /Users/ABC/Work/Libs/android-ndk-r10e --boost=1.55.0 --with-libraries=date_time,math,random,thread,system

error:

Undefined or not supported Android NDK version!

fix:
in "build-android.sh" file, after

    "10 (64-bit)"|"10b (64-bit)"|"10c (64-bit)"|"10d (64-bit)")                 
        TOOLCHAIN=${TOOLCHAIN:-arm-linux-androideabi-4.6}                       
        CXXPATH=$AndroidNDKRoot/toolchains/${TOOLCHAIN}/prebuilt/${PlatformOS}-x86_64/bin/arm-linux-androideabi-g++
        TOOLSET=gcc-androidR8e                                                  
        ;;

add

    "10e (64-bit)")                                                                
        TOOLCHAIN=${TOOLCHAIN:-arm-linux-androideabi-4.9}                          
        CXXPATH=$AndroidNDKRoot/toolchains/${TOOLCHAIN}/prebuilt/${PlatformOS}-x86_64/bin/arm-linux-androideabi-g++
        TOOLSET=gcc-androidR8e                                                     
        ;; 

so that it recognize the newest "r10e" NDK version, and in "r10e" NDK, it only contains androideabi-4.8 and androideabi-4.9, there isn't androideabi-4.6 anymore.

error:

In file included from ./boost/date_time/gregorian/greg_month.hpp:12:0,
                 from libs/date_time/src/gregorian/greg_month.cpp:14:
./boost/date_time/constrained_value.hpp:12:21: fatal error: exception: No such file or directory
 #include <exception>
                     ^
compilation terminated.

    "arm-linux-androideabi-g++"  -ftemplate-depth-128 -D__arm__ -D_REENTRANT -D_GLIBCXX__PTHREADS -O3 -finline-functions -Wno-inline -Wall -fexceptions -frtti -fpic -ffunction-sections -funwind-tables -D__ARM_ARCH_5__ -D__ARM_ARCH_5T__ -D__ARM_ARCH_5E__ -D__ARM_ARCH_5TE__ -Wno-psabi -march=armv5te -mtune=xscale -msoft-float -mthumb -Os -fomit-frame-pointer -fno-strict-aliasing -finline-limit=64 -I/Users/ABC/Work/Libs/android-ndk-r10e/platforms/android-9/arch-arm/usr/include -Wa,--noexecstack -DANDROID -D__ANDROID__ -DNDEBUG -O2 -g -I/Users/ABC/Work/Libs/android-ndk-r10e/sources/cxx-stl/gnu-libstdc++/4.6/include -I/Users/ABC/Work/Libs/android-ndk-r10e/sources/cxx-stl/gnu-libstdc++/4.6/libs/armeabi/include -fvisibility=hidden -fvisibility-inlines-hidden -fdata-sections -pthread  -DBOOST_ALL_NO_LIB=1 -DBOOST_DATE_TIME_STATIC_LINK -DDATE_TIME_INLINE -DNDEBUG  -I"." -c -o "bin.v2/libs/date_time/build/gcc-androidR8e/release/link-static/target-os-linux/threading-multi/gregorian/greg_month.o" "libs/date_time/src/gregorian/greg_month.cpp"

...failed gcc.compile.c++ bin.v2/libs/date_time/build/gcc-androidR8e/release/link-static/target-os-linux/threading-multi/gregorian/greg_month.o...

fix:
in "configs/user-config-boost-1_55_0.jam", since the "TOOLSET" for "r10e" is "androidR8e" in "build-android.sh" file, so after

# --------------------------------------------------------------------          
using gcc : androidR8e                                                          
:                                                                               
arm-linux-androideabi-g++ 

i change

<compileflags>-I$(AndroidNDKRoot)/sources/cxx-stl/gnu-libstdc++/4.6/include     
<compileflags>-I$(AndroidNDKRoot)/sources/cxx-stl/gnu-libstdc++/4.6/libs/armeabi/include

to be

<compileflags>-I$(AndroidNDKRoot)/sources/cxx-stl/gnu-libstdc++/4.9/include     
<compileflags>-I$(AndroidNDKRoot)/sources/cxx-stl/gnu-libstdc++/4.9/libs/armeabi/include

Actually there is no "/Users/ABC/Work/Libs/android-ndk-r10e/sources/cxx-stl/gnu-libstdc++/4.6/include" and "/Users/ABC/Work/Libs/android-ndk-r10e/sources/cxx-stl/gnu-libstdc++/4.6/libs/armeabi/include" folders, that's why it cannot find exception.hpp.

about "build-android.py" file: "$PROGDIR" is "Boost-for-Android" folder, "$BOOST_DIR" is "boost_1_xx_x" folder, by default every time you run "./build-android.py" it will delete the "boost_1_xx_x" folder and "build" folder, then unzip the "boost_1_xx_x.tar.bz2" again, which is a bit annoying when you are debugging the compilation errors, you can comment line 148-151

#if [ -d "$PROGDIR/$BOOST_DIR" ]; then                                             
    #echo "Cleaning: $BOOST_DIR"                                                   
    #rm -f -r $PROGDIR/$BOOST_DIR                                                  
#fi

then when you run "build-android.py", it will only delete build folder.

Also by default "build-android.py" will copy "configs/user-configboost-1_xx_x.jam" to be "boost_1_xx_x/tools/build/v2/user-config.jam" in line 353 after apply patches to boost, and it actually calls "boost_1_xx_x/tools/build/v2/user-config.jam" file's configurations when it complies. If you comment the line 148-151 as i mentioned above, running "build-android.py" will not copy jam file anymore, so you will need to change "boost_1_xx_x/tools/build/v2/user-config.jam" instead of "configs/user-configboost-1_xx_x.jam" when fix the second type of error.

After all i only built few modules (date_time,math,random,thread,system), and i got stucked in the second type of error for almost a whole day, as i found in "Boost-for-Android/boost_1_55_0/boost" folder there is also "exception.hpp" file and a "exception" folder, at first i thought it was trying to include this header file instead of the "exception.hpp" in NDK folder, so i tried to include "Boost-for-Android/boost_1_55_0/boost" many times but still got the same error untill i found there is no ".../gnu-libstdc++/4.6/..." folders inside NDK.

I still got a "link.jam: No such file or directory" thing, but the compilation finished and seems all the libraries i need are built, hope it works fine in run time.

[francoisvdv]

Thanks for sharing this, has helped me a lot!