“...one of the most highly regarded and expertly designed C++ library projects in the world.” Herb Sutter and Andrei Alexandrescu, C++ Coding Standards

Welcome to Boost.org!

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.

Participation

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.

Latest News

August 11, 2005 - Version 1.33.0

New Libraries

  • Iostreams Library: Framework for defining streams, stream buffers and i/o filters, from Jonathan Turkanis.
  • Functional/Hash Library: A TR1 hash function object that can be extended to hash user defined types, from Daniel James.
  • Parameter Library: Write functions that accept arguments by name: especially useful when a function has more than one argument with a useful default value, since named arguments can be passed in any order.
  • Pointer Container Library: Containers for storing heap-allocated polymorphic objects to ease OO-programming, from Thorsten Ottosen.
  • Wave: Standards conformant implementation of the mandated C99/C++ preprocessor functionality packed behind an easy to use iterator interface, from Hartmut Kaiser.

Updated Libraries

Supported Compilers

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 3.x on Mac OS X.
  • Borland C++ 5.6.4 on Windows.
  • GNU C++ 2.95.3 (with and without STLport), 3.2.x., 3.3.x, 3.4.x, 4.0.x on Windows, Linux and Solaris.
  • Intel C++ 8.1, 9.0 on Windows, Linux.
  • Metrowerks CodeWarrior 8.3, 9.4, 9.5 on Mac OS X and Windows.
  • Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 (sp5, with and without STLport), 7.0, 7.1, 8.0 beta. Note: due to intermittent problems with Visual C++ 8.0 beta, and the presence of a variety of pre-release compiler builds, we are unable to guarantee compatibility until the final compiler is released.

Acknowledgements

Medieval Mr. GregorDouglas Gregor managed this release.

A great number of people contributed their time and expertise to make this release possible. Special thanks go to Aleksey Gurtovoy and Misha Bergal, who managed to keep the regression testing system working throughout the release process; David Abrahams, Beman Dawes, Aleksey Gurtovoy, Rene Rivera and Jonathan Turkanis for greatly improving the quality of this release; Rene Rivera for the new Boost web page design; and Zoltan "cad" Juhasz for the new Boost logo.