In case you would like to use the shared library variant or the static library variant of the Unit Test Framework, the library needs to be built. Building the Unit Test Framework is in fact quite easy.

In the sequel, we define

More documentation about Boost's build system can be found here.

Windows

You need to have a compilation toolchain. Visual Studio Express is such one, freely available from the Microsoft website. Once installed, open a Visual Studio Command Line tools prompt and build the Boost build program b2 (see the link above). You will then be able to compile the Unit Test Framework with different variants.

Static variant

For building 32bits libraries, open a console window and enter the following commands:

> cd $boost_path
> bootstrap.bat
> b2 address-model=32 architecture=x86 --with-test link=static \
>                     --prefix=$boost_installation_prefix install

For building 64bits libraries, the commands become:

> cd $boost_path
> bootstrap.bat
> b2 address-model=64 architecture=x86 --with-test link=static \
>                    --prefix=$boost_installation_prefix install

Shared library variant

In order to build the shared library variant, the directive link=static should be replaced by link=shared on the above command lines. For instance, for 64bits builds, the commands become:

> cd $boost_path
> bootstrap.bat
> b2 address-model=64 architecture=x86 --with-test link=shared --prefix=$boost_installation_prefix install

Linux/OSX

For Unix/Linux/OSX operating system, the build of the Unit Test Framework is very similar to the one on Windows:

> cd $boost_path
> ./bootstrap.sh
> ./b2 --with-test --prefix=$boost_installation_prefix install