Using Boost.Pool in VS2010 - Linker error

Question

The Boost.Pool documentation says that (emphasis mine):

The Boost Pool library is a header-only library. That means there is no .lib, .dll, or .so to build; just add the Boost directory to your compiler's include file path, and you should be good to go!

But when I try to compile code like this in VS2010 SP1:

#include <string>
#include <vector>

#include <boost\pool\pool_alloc.hpp>

int main()
{
    typedef std::basic_string<wchar_t, std::char_traits<wchar_t>, 
        boost::pool_allocator<wchar_t>> PoolString;

    std::vector<PoolString> vec;
    for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++)
    {
        PoolString s(L"Some test string. ABCDEF.");
        vec.push_back(s);
    }

    // Release pool memory
    boost::singleton_pool<boost::pool_allocator_tag, sizeof(wchar_t)>::release_memory();

    return 0;
}

I got a linker error:

error LNK1104: cannot open file 'libboost_thread-vc100-mt-gd-1_49.lib'

Is Boost.Pool documentation incorrect? What am I missing here? How can I use Boost.Pool?

The boost::singleton_pool is using a mutex type, which is located in the boost::thread library. Therefore you need to link libboost_thread. — nabulke
if you look in boost\pool\detail\mutex.hpp it appears that pool lib defines its own mutex and does not refer the boost::thread lib — Marius
@nabulke Indeed boost::pool 1.49 uses the boost::thread, I was looking at version 1.47 which defines its own mutex (boost.org/doc/libs/1_47_0/boost/pool/detail/mutex.hpp). If linking with thread lib is not desired there is the option to use and older pool lib version. — Marius

nabulke nabulke · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-04T11:11:01

The boost::singleton_pool is using a default mutex implementation that is located in boost::thread, which is not header only.

See the singleton_pool header quoted below for information on how to remove the dependency:

Mutex This class is the type of mutex to use to protect simultaneous access to the underlying Pool. Can be any Boost.Thread Mutex type or boost::details::pool::null_mutex. It is exposed so that users may declare some singleton pools normally (i.e., with synchronization), but some singleton pools without synchronization (by specifying boost::details::pool::null_mutex) for efficiency reasons. The member typedef mutex exposes the value of this template parameter. The default for this parameter is boost::details::pool::default_mutex which is a synonym for either boost::details::pool::null_mutex (when threading support is turned off in the compiler (so BOOST_HAS_THREADS is not set), or threading support has ben explicitly disabled with BOOST_DISABLE_THREADS (Boost-wide disabling of threads) or BOOST_POOL_NO_MT (this library only)) or for boost::mutex (when threading support is enabled in the compiler).

Using Boost.Pool in VS2010 - Linker error

3 Answers