boost link error LNK2038: “boost_log_abi” “v2s_mt_nt6” doesn't match “v2_mt_nt6"

Question

what does this link error mean ? and how to fix it

error LNK2038: “boost_log_abi” “v2s_mt_nt6” doesn't match  “v2_mt_nt6"

i have tried

  ADD_DEFINITIONS(-DBOOST_ALL_DYN_LINK)
  ADD_DEFINITIONS(-DBOOST_LOG_DYN_LINK)
  ADD_DEFINITIONS(-DBOOST_USE_WINAPI_VERSION=0x601)

i havent defined BOOST_LOG_DOXYGEN_PASS when building boost with b2, why it is v2s_mt_nt6 not v2_mt_nt6 — 周洪宇, May 09 '18 at 16:07
Could you share a little more context on how your build is set up (what files you link with, or the build command that actually fails)? I suspect you link against a statically built version of Boost, but I need a little more data to back that up — hlt, May 09 '18 at 18:00
i downloaded a pre-built version of boost, and now its work, i encountered some error when building from the boost source code to generate dynamic library. thanks a lot. — 周洪宇, May 10 '18 at 01:05
Yes. It's possible that your build of boost actually ended up generating static libraries - with many of them, you don't notice the differences, but Boost.Log causes trouble. I'll post this as an answer so other people can find it when they search for it. — hlt, May 10 '18 at 01:14

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered May 10 '18 at 01:21

Your Boost.Log library seems to have been built with different flags than your main program.

From config.hpp, we can see what these ABI names mean:

v2s_mt_nt6 is statically linked, with multithreading support, on Windows Vista or higher (version 6)
v2_mt_nt6 is dynamically linked, with multithreading support, on Windows Vista or higher (version 6)

The BOOST_LOG_DLL macro decides which of the two paths to use. It is defined if any of BOOST_LOG_DYN_LINK or BOOST_ALL_DYN_LINK are defined.

If you statically link against Boost.Log (via a .lib files or similar), you must not define either of these two macros.¹

This means that you can either remove the extra preprocessor definitions (because you are trying to link to a static library) or use a dynamic library version of Boost (see for example here on how to set that up on Windows).

^{¹ Note that some libraries ignore those flags outright. Boost.Log seems to be one of the few that actually cause issues if these macros are misconfigured}

boost link error LNK2038: “boost_log_abi” “v2s_mt_nt6” doesn't match “v2_mt_nt6"

1 Answers1