Building Boost X for platform Y

How to build the Boost C++ library for different targets.

This is an example of building Boost 1.55 for Visual Studio 2017 (toolset v141)

1. Run bootstrap.bat
2. Edit project-config.jam
3. Call b2.exe with the correct parameters

1. Run bootstrap.bat

This should create the b2.exe executable that is the build manager for the Boost library.

2. Edit project-config.jam

Visual studio 2017 is MSVC 15 (https://dev.to/yumetodo/list-of-mscver-and-mscfullver-8nd)

import option ; 
 
using msvc : 14 : "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Professional\VC\Tools\MSVC\14.16.27023\bin\Hostx64\x64\cl.exe";
 
option.set keep-going : false ; 

3. Call b2.exe with the correct parameters

Documentation for the B2 tool can be found here: https://boostorg.github.io/build/manual/master/index.html

The toolset is 14.1 (v141). And we want the libraries for x64.

> b2 toolset=msvc-14.1 address-model=64

We want static libraries (not dll):

> b2 toolset=msvc-14.1 address-model=64 link=static

We can specify to build Release or Debug versions:

> b2 toolset=msvc-14.1 address-model=64 link=static variant=release

With different build, it can be usefull to direct all output (created libraries) to a specific folder:

> b2 toolset=msvc-14.1 address-model=64 link=static variant=release --build-dir=.Output-x64-static-release