Sorry, I figured out how to use the search capability. I was misinformed because the documentation did not include the possible values for boost::dll::load_mode which I discovered by needing to have a look in the source code. From: Leo Carreon Sent: Sunday, June 19, 2016 1:40 PM To: Boost Users Mailing List Subject: Suggestion for boost::dll:import_alias<>() or boost::dll::import<>() Hi, I have been experimenting with the Boost.DLL library and I have discovered that the “lib” argument of either boost::dll::import_alias<>() or boost::dll::import<>() functions require the full path to the shared library to load. If I’m not mistaken, this functions use either the POSIX dlopen() function or the Windows LoadLibrary() function. These platform specific functions are capable of searching a list of paths if a non-qualified shared library name is given. My suggestion is to use this search capability for non-qualified shared library names. Kind regards, Leo Carreon