Uninstall boost and install another version

Question

I\'ve installed the boost libraries on Linux Mint 12 using the command sudo apt-get install libboost-dev libboost-doc, which installs the default version availa

Answer 1

Boost can installed by two ways

• Deb package
• wget and install manually

In some case we might have installed by both type which can cause version error. Lets see how to uninstall both.

sudo apt-get update

# to uninstall deb version
sudo apt-get -y --purge remove libboost-all-dev libboost-doc libboost-dev
# to uninstall the version which we installed from source
sudo rm -f /usr/lib/libboost_*

Then we need to install other dependencies if they are not met

sudo apt-get -y install build-essential g++ python-dev autotools-dev libicu-dev libbz2-dev

Lets download the boost version which we need from the link. I am downloading the 1.54 version. Then untar and install it.

# go to home folder
cd
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/boost/boost/1.54.0/boost_1_54_0.tar.gz
tar -zxvf boost_1_54_0.tar.gz
cd boost_1_54_0
# get the no of cpucores to make faster
cpuCores=`cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep "cpu cores" | uniq | awk '{print $NF}'`
echo "Available CPU cores: "$cpuCores
./bootstrap.sh  # this will generate ./b2
sudo ./b2 --with=all -j $cpuCores install

Now let's check the installed version

cat /usr/local/include/boost/version.hpp | grep "BOOST_LIB_VERSION"

You will something like below

//  BOOST_LIB_VERSION must be defined to be the same as BOOST_VERSION
#define BOOST_LIB_VERSION "1_54"

Version 1.54 of boost is installed

That's it, it worked for me. Let me know if you face any issues.