BOOST (filesystem, system) is an essential external library for CoCoA-5.
BOOST is not used at all in CoCoALib. Currently (2022-12-14) BOOST is also not required for any of the optional external libraries.
If you are lucky BOOST (or the necessary parts of it) are already installed
on your computer. The CoCoA configure script should find it automatically
(and will check that all required sub-libraries are present).
If you are not so lucky, you will have to install BOOST yourself. There are two approaches: use a package manager, or download the sources and compile BOOST yourself. Using the package manager is likely simpler and quicker, but you will probably need "administrator rights".
Different GNU/Linux systems have different package managers.
Here we assume use of apt-get; hopefully this suffices for most users.
sudo apt-get install libboost-dev libboost-doc libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-system-dev
You can download the BOOST sources from http://www.boost.org/.
Current version is 1.81, and is about 135Mbytes.
It is simplest to make a complete BOOST installation; that way you are sure to have everything you need -- but a full build can take a while, and occupy quite a lot of space on your disk.
Alternatively, you can try building just those sub-libraries needed by CoCoA-5;
at the moment CoCoA-5 uses the following BOOST sub-libraries:
filesystem and system.
To build BOOST first use their script bootstrap.sh, then use the script b2.
The b2 script requires some extra options, so in the examples below
insert these extra two options
./b2 architecture=x86 address-model=32_64 <remaining-options>
To make a system-wide installation you will need "administrator rights"; if you do not have these rights, look at the next section about "personal installation".
These steps should work:
cd <BOOST_DIR> ./bootstrap.sh sudo ./b2 variant=release threading=multi link=static install
Remember the note for old MacBooks!
Anyone can make a personal installation; if you do not have "administrator right" then you must do this.
Before compiling you must decide where to put your personal installation;
this must be somewhere inside your own filespace. For example, I can choose
to install BOOST into /home/john/software
Now I do the following steps: the prefix option says where to install BOOST
cd <BOOST_DIR> ./bootstrap.sh --prefix=/home/john/software ./b2 variant=release threading=multi link=static install
Recall the note above about old MacBooks!
I do not really recommend this.
If you do not want to install the complete BOOST libraries then you
can specify which ones by giving an option to bootstrap.sh.
For instance CoCoA-5 needs the sub-libraries filesystem and system.
The steps to follow then look like this:
cd <BOOST_DIR> ./bootstrap.sh --with-libraries="filesystem,system" ./b2 ... <options-for-b2>
If you have a system-side installation, the CoCoA configure script should
probably find it automatically. If you made a personal installation then you
must tell CoCoA where to find it: in the example above I chose to install
BOOST into /home/john/software, so I must tell CoCoA where it is:
cd CoCoALib-0.99 ./configure --with-boost-hdr-dir=/home/john/software <more-configure-options> make
http://www.technoboria.com/2009/12/compiling-boost-on-mac-os-x-for-64bit-builds/ http://wiki.tiker.net/BoostInstallationHowto
While BOOST is an interesting and worthy project, we endeavour to avoid using it inside CoCoALib.
I found the following website useful:
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Program-Library-HOWTO/shared-libraries.html
2022
2016