Boost provides free peer-reviewed portable C++ source libraries.

We emphasize libraries that work well with the C++ Standard Library. Boost libraries are intended to be widely useful, and usable across a broad spectrum of applications. The Boost license encourages both commercial and non-commercial use.

We aim to establish "existing practice" and provide reference implementations so that Boost libraries are suitable for eventual standardization. Ten Boost libraries are already included in the C++ Standards Committee's Library Technical Report ( TR1) as a step toward becoming part of a future C++ Standard. More Boost libraries are proposed for the upcoming TR2.

Getting started: Boost works on almost any modern operating system, including UNIX and Windows variants. Follow the Getting Started Guide to download and install Boost. Popular Linux and Unix distributions such as Fedora, Debian, and NetBSD include pre-built Boost packages. Boost may also already be available on your organization's internal web server.

Background: The Background Information page has introductory material to help those educating their organization about Boost.

Although Boost was begun by members of the C++ Standards Committee Library Working Group, participation has expanded to include thousands of programmers from the C++ community at large.

If you are interested in participating in Boost, please join our main developers mailing list. Discussions are highly technical, and list members are encouraged to participate in formal reviews of proposed libraries. There is also a users mailing list, and several project specific lists.

Both the main Boost developers list and the users list are also accessible as newsgroups.

March 8, 2008 - Floating Point Utilities Accepted

• View the announcement here.

March 1, 2008 - Proto Review Begins

• View the announcement here.

February 18, 2008 - Floating Point Utilities Review Begins

• View the announcement here.

February 5, 2008 - Flyweight Accepted

• View the announcement here.

February 4, 2008 - Logging Review Begins

• View the announcement here.

January 17, 2008 - Singleton Rejected

• View the announcement here.

January 21, 2008 - Flyweight Review Begins

• View the announcement here.

January 17, 2008 - Switch Accepted Provisionally

• View the announcement here.

January 14, 2008 - Singleton Review Begins

• View the announcement here.

January 5, 2008 - Switch Review Begins

• View the announcement here.

December 30, 2007 - Functional/Factory Accepted

• View the announcement here.

December 19, 2007 - Unordered Containers Accepted

• View the announcement here.

December 19, 2007 - Critical Bug in Function Library

• Boost.Function in Boost 1.34.x has a bug that affects the construction of Boost.Function objects in a multi-threaded context. The problem has been fixed in the Boost trunk and for the upcoming Boost 1.35.x. To patch your Boost 1.34.x, copy the files function_base.hpp and function_template.hpp into the Boost directory boost/function.

December 17, 2007 - Functional/Factory Review Begins

• View the announcement here.

December 12, 2007 - Functional/Forward Accepted

• View the announcement here.

December 7, 2007 - Unordered Containers Review Begins

• View the announcement here.

December 3, 2007 - Functional/Forward Review Begins

• View the announcement here.

November 7, 2007 - Exception Library Accepted

• View the announcement here.

September 27, 2007 - Exception Review Begins

• View the announcement here.

September 14, 2007 - Review Wizard Status Report

• View the report here.

August 17, 2007 - Time Series Accepted

• View the announcement here.

August 13, 2007 - Scope Exit Review Begins

• View the announcement here.

July 30, 2007 - Time Series Review Begins

• View the announcement here.

July 24, 2007 - Version 1.34.1

This is a bug fix release addressing many problems with the 1.34.0 release. It is a recommended upgrade for all users of Boost 1.34.0. For a complete list of fixes see Boost Trac.

Supported Compilers

New in this release is improved support for the IBM XL C/C++ compiler.

Boost is tested on a wide range of compilers and platforms. Since Boost libraries rely on modern C++ features not available in all compilers, not all Boost libraries will work with every compiler. The following compilers and platforms have been extensively tested with Boost, although many other compilers and platforms will work as well. For more information, see the regression test results.

• Apple GCC 4.0.1 on Mac OS X.
• Borland C++ 5.8.2 on Windows.
• GNU C++
  • 3.2.x., 3.3.x, 3.4.x, 4.0.x, 4.1.x on Linux
  • 4.1.x on Solaris
  • 3.4.x on Windows
• HP C++ for Tru64 UNIX 7.1.
• HP aC++ A.06.14.
• Intel C++ 9.1 on Windows, 9.0 on Linux.
• Metrowerks CodeWarrior 9.4 on Windows.
• Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 (sp5, with and without STLport), 7.0, 7.1, 8.0. Note: Boost does not support the non-standard "Safe" C++ Library shipping with Visual C++ 8.0, which may result in many spurious warnings from Boost headers and other standards-conforming C++ code. To suppress these warnings, define the macro _SCL_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE.
• Sun Studio 11 on Solaris.

Acknowledgements

Thomas Witt managed this release.

A great number of people contributed their time and expertise to make this release possible. Special thanks go to Kim Barrett consolidating Boost.Iostreams changes from various branches and Rene Rivera for general build and installation support.