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c++mongodbboostboost-date-time

boost::date_time error while building MongoDB: winapi is not member

While building MongoDB with SCons and boost, I'm getting errors. Here's my command line:

C:\mongo-cxx-driver>Scons --prefix=$HOME/mongo-client-lib --cpppath=C:\boost_1_66_0 --libpath=C:\boost_1_66_0\stage64\lib --dbg=on --64 install

Here are the error messages I'm getting:

src\mongo\util\time_support.cpp(904): error C2039: 'winapi': is not a member of 'boost::date_time'
C:\boost_1_66_0\boost/date_time/filetime_functions.hpp(28): note: see declaration of 'boost::date_time'
src\mongo\util\time_support.cpp(904): error C3083: 'winapi': the symbol to the left of a '::' must be a type
src\mongo\util\time_support.cpp(904): error C2039: 'file_time_to_microseconds': is not a member of 'boost::date_time'
C:\boost_1_66_0\boost/date_time/filetime_functions.hpp(28): note: see declaration of 'boost::date_time'
src\mongo\util\time_support.cpp(904): error C3861: 'file_time_to_microseconds': identifier not found
src\mongo\util\time_support.cpp(936): error C2039: 'winapi': is not a member of 'boost::date_time'
C:\boost_1_66_0\boost/date_time/filetime_functions.hpp(28): note: see declaration of 'boost::date_time'
src\mongo\util\time_support.cpp(936): error C3083: 'winapi': the symbol to the left of a '::' must be a type
src\mongo\util\time_support.cpp(936): error C2039: 'file_time_to_microseconds': is not a member of 'boost::date_time'
C:\boost_1_66_0\boost/date_time/filetime_functions.hpp(28): note: see declaration of 'boost::date_time'
src\mongo\util\time_support.cpp(936): error C3861: 'file_time_to_microseconds': identifier not found
scons: *** [build\win32\64\dbg_on\mongo\util\time_support.obj] Error 2
scons: building terminated because of errors.
Solution

  • TL; DR - You can't expect to pick an arbitrary or current version of a library and build MongoDB with it; they snapshot their dependencies in their repo and there's no promises about building with versions besides those.

    MongoDB has snapshots of its dependencies in the src/thirdparty directory. The version of boost snapshotted there is 1.60, which was released in 2015. You can see that in that version of boost, there is a winapi namespace defined in boost/date_time/filetime_functions.hpp.

    However, you're trying to build against boost 1.66, which was released in December 2017. The release notes mention changes to date_time:

    DateTime:

    • The library has been converted to use Boost.WinAPI as the abstraction layer for Windows SDK.

    • Fixed an integral overflow that could cause incorrect results when adding or subtracting many years from a date (see here).

    That version of filetime_functions does not have this namespace inside of date_time, nor does the current 1.67 snapshot of filetime_functions.hpp.

    Looking at the git blame log for src/mongo/util/time_support.cpp, it looks like the mongo code in question mentioning date_time::winapi was added 3 years ago (before this winapi refactoring) and hasn't changed since.