Choosing a C++17 Polyfill

The mongocxx driver uses C++17 features std::optional and std::string_view. To use the C++17 standard library implementations for these features, set the CMake configuration variable CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD to 17 or higher. Otherwise, to compile the mongocxx driver for pre-C++17 configurations, a polyfill library implementation must be selected from the following options:

• bsoncxx (default only when -DENABLE_BSONCXX_POLY_USE_IMPLS=ON)

  Select with -DBSONCXX_POLY_USE_IMPLS=ON. This option is most recommended, as it does not require additional external library dependencies. To enable selecting this option by default for pre-C++17 configurations when no other options are specified, set ENABLE_BSONCXX_POLY_USE_IMPLS=ON (this option will be set to ON by default in an upcoming major release).

• MNMLSTC/core (default for non-Windows platforms)

  This option is deprecated and will be removed in an upcoming major release. Select with -DBSONCXX_POLY_USE_MNMLSTC=1.

  Note

  This option vendors a header-only installation of MNMLSTC/core into the bsoncxx library installation and will therefore download MLNMLSTC from GitHub during the configuration process. If you already have an available version of MNMLSTC on your system, you can avoid the download step by using -DBSONCXX_POLY_USE_SYSTEM_MNMLSTC.

• Boost (default for Windows platforms)

  This option is deprecated and will be removed in an upcoming major release. Select with -DBSONCXX_POLY_USE_BOOST=1. This is currently the only non-bsoncxx option if you are using a version of MSVC that does not support C++17.

Most users should use default behavior with -DENABLE_BSONCXX_POLY_USE_IMPLS=ON. However, if you have a preference for one of the external polyfill libraries (e.g. already a dependency being used by your application), you may prefer to explicitly select that external polyfill library rather than rely on default selection behavior.