The library requires a C++11 compiler as a minimum and is regularly tested with the following compilers:

The library supports POSIX systems and Windows 10 and newer. Note that many operating systems not normally thought of as POSIX systems, such as mainframe legacy operating systems or embedded operating systems, support POSIX compatible file systems and so will work with the Filesystem Library.

Besides the operating systems mentioned above, the library has been used on HP-UX, IBM AIX, SGI IRIX, OpenBSD, FreeBSD and Sun Solaris operating systems using a variety of compilers. It is also used by several smart phone operating systems.

Boost.Filesystem is implemented as a separately compiled library, so you must install binaries in a location that can be found by your linker. If you followed the Boost Getting Started instructions, that's already been done for you.

Otherwise, the library can also be built manually using Boost.Build or CMake using the project files in the library directory. For example, using Boost.Build one can build a release version of the library with the following command line in the Boost root directory:

b2 --with-filesystem variant=release stage

With CMake, the library can be built with the following commands, also in the Boost root directory:

mkdir build_static_release
cd build_static_release
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DBOOST_INCLUDE_LIBRARIES=filesystem
cmake --build .

The library can be built for static or dynamic (shared/dll) linking. For Boost.Build, this is controlled with the link property which can have values shared and static. For example, to build shared libraries:

b2 --with-filesystem variant=release link=shared stage

For CMake, the BUILD_SHARED_LIBS option enables building shared libraries. Note that with CMake users typically have to create a separate build directory for every build configuration.

mkdir build_shared_release
cd build_shared_release
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=1 -DBOOST_INCLUDE_LIBRARIES=filesystem
cmake --build .

When using Boost.Filesystem as a shared library, users should define BOOST_ALL_DYN_LINK or BOOST_FILESYSTEM_DYN_LINK macros when compiling their code. This will configure the auto-linking process to link with the shared library instead of the static one. See the Separate Compilation page for more details.

Users may define the following macros if desired. Sensible defaults are provided, so users can ignore these macros unless they have special needs.

Some of the macros can be defined when compiling user's code, which will affect library interfaces. Other macros can be defined during Boost.Filesystem compilation, which affect library implementation. Those macros need not be defined when building code that uses Boost.Filesystem.

In order to define macros when building Boost.Filesystem one can use define property with Boost.Build or -D option with CMake. For example:

b2 --with-filesystem variant=release define=BOOST_FILESYSTEM_DISABLE_STATX stage

or:

mkdir build_static_release
cd build_static_release
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DBOOST_INCLUDE_LIBRARIES=filesystem -DBOOST_FILESYSTEM_DISABLE_STATX
cmake --build .

For new code using Boost.Filesystem, defining BOOST_FILESYSTEM_NO_DEPRECATED before including filesystem headers is strongly recommended. This prevents inadvertent use of old features, particularly legacy function names, that have been replaced and are going to go away in the future.

Library components can be introduced by including one of the headers in the boost/filesystem directory or boost/filesystem.hpp, which includes all headers in boost/filesystem.

Library components are defined in the boost::filesystem namespace.

Do not include headers from boost/filesystem/detail directory or use symbols from the boost::filesystem::detail namespace. Those are implementation details of the library, they are not part of the public interface and may be changed or removed without notice.