yum : using boost 1.69 instead of default (1.53) version on centos

Question

I want to compile (c++/cmake) code using boost 1.69. I am on centos 7.

After :

sudo yum install boost-devel.x86.64

the code compiles fine, but using the default version which is 1.53.

If I look at the libraries installed in /lib64, I see for example:

>> ls -al  /lib64/ | grep boost_timer
lrwxrwxrwx.   1 root root          27 Jun  9 11:50 libboost_timer-mt.so -> libboost_timer-mt.so.1.53.0
-rwxr-xr-x.   1 root root       19848 Apr  1 04:26 libboost_timer-mt.so.1.53.0

The yum installation for boost 1.69 is also available. So I can do:

sudo yum install boost169-devel.x86_64

which updates for example the content of /lib64/

>> ls -al  /lib64/ | grep boost_timer
lrwxrwxrwx.   1 root root          27 Jun  9 11:50 libboost_timer-mt.so -> libboost_timer-mt.so.1.53.0
-rwxr-xr-x.   1 root root       19848 Apr  1 04:26 libboost_timer-mt.so.1.53.0
lrwxrwxrwx.   1 root root          24 Jun  9 11:50 libboost_timer.so -> libboost_timer.so.1.53.0
-rwxr-xr-x.   1 root root       19848 Apr  1 04:26 libboost_timer.so.1.53.0
-rwxr-xr-x.   1 root root       24104 Apr 23  2019 libboost_timer.so.1.69.0

also :

>> ls /usr/include/ | grep boost
boost
boost169

At this point my workspace still compiles, but still using 1.53.

I would like my workspace to compile using 1.69. I could achieve this by botching FindBoost.cmake but this does not feel like the clean thing to do.

Also I tried (yum) removed boost-dev.x86-64, which removed the folder /usr/include/boost and the related so files in /lib64, which leaves for example:

>> ls -al /lib64/ | grep boost_timer
libboost_timer-mt.so.1.53.0
libboost_timer.so.1.53.0
libboost_timer.so.1.69.0

(note that there is no longer a "libboost_timer-mt.so")

At this point I believe I could also get my workspace to compile by manually creating symbolic links /usr/include/boost and /lib64/libboost_*.so , but that does also not feel like the clean thing to do

(note: I created the symbolic link /usr/include/boost pointing to /usr/include/boost64/boost, and indeed cmake stopped complaining about BOOST_INCLUDE_DIR, but because I did not create the symbolic links for the libraries, cmake still complains about those).

Is there a cleaner alternative way to manual creation of symbolic links ?

---

edit : I did create manually symbolic links for all the boost related libraries the compiler was complaining about, and I can confirm this worked.

Answer 1

The closest you can get to setting the default for CMake is to set BOOST_INCLUDEDIR and BOOST_LIBRARYDIR as environment variables. FindBoost.cmake explicitly looks for those variables in the environment (something CMake does not do by default). So you can globally export BOOST_INCLUDEDIR=/usr/include/boost169 and export BOOST_LIBRARYDIR=/usr/lib64/boost169 somewhere, or you can also wrap command invocations with, e.g., BOOST_INCLUDEDIR=/usr/include/boost169 BOOST_LIBRARYDIR=/usr/lib64/boost169 ./mybuild.sh (assuming that mybuild.sh ends up invoking CMake or handles those environment variables itself, of course).