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 available in the repositories. However, the project I have to do needs the 1.44 version of boost. How do I uninstall the default (current) version 1.46 and install 1.44?

I couldn't find the documentation on the boost website to install boost from the .tar.gz package.

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 see 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.

Answer 2

You can uninstall with

apt-get --purge remove libboost-dev libboost-doc 

Download the package you need from boost website, extract and follow "getting started" instructions found inside index.html in the extracted directory.

Answer 3

Tested working Ubuntu 20.04 Use my script to uninstall your older version of boost in ubuntu 20.04 and follow rams instructions above

#!/bin/bash
sudo apt-get -y --purge remove libboost-all-dev libboost-doc libboost-dev
echo "clear boost dir"
sudo rm -r /usr/local/lib/libboost*
sudo rm -r /usr/local/include/boost
sudo rm -f /usr/lib/libboost_*
sudo rm -r /usr/include/boost