How to uninstall BOOST 1.49 and install BOOST 1.54 in ubuntu?

Question

I have a boost 1.49 in my ubuntu system. And I am trying to uninstall boost 1.49 and completely remove it from my system.

And after that install the Boost 1.54.0

I did like this to uninstall 1.49 from my system -

sudo apt-get --purge remove libboost-dev
sudo apt-get --purge remove libboost-all-dev

And after that when I do below command to see the version, it still says I have 1.49

cat /usr/include/boost/version.hpp | grep "BOOST_LIB_VERSION"
//  BOOST_LIB_VERSION must be defined to be the same as BOOST_VERSION
#define BOOST_LIB_VERSION "1_49"

Not sure why?

And I tried installing Boost 1.54.0 version like this -

wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/boost/files/boost/1.54.0/boost_1_54_0.tar.gz/download
tar -xvzf boost_1_54_0.tar.gz
cd boost_1_54_0/
./bootstrap.sh --with-libraries=atomic,date_time,exception,filesystem,iostreams,locale,program_options,regex,signals,system,test,thread,timer,log
sudo ./b2 install

But still it is not showing me boost 1.54.0 version installed?

Any pointers how to remove BOOST 1.49 from my system and install BOOST 1.54 in my machine?

Answer 1

Installation of Boost via apt installs several Boost packages which are not uninstalled on the remove that you are using. Try sudo apt-get autoremove which will remove the non-required packages. I tested this on my Ubuntu 12.04.x LTS which successfully removed the non-required Boost packages.

The way you are reinstalling the package might install Boost on your (/home) as opposed to on system (/usr..).

Use the --prefix option of b2 to set the installation location.

Depending on where it installs, at the completion of ./b2, you will see messages like these:

The Boost C++ Libraries were successfully built!

The following directory should be added to compiler include paths:

/home/you/boost_1_54_0

The following directory should be added to linker library paths:

/home/you/boost_1_54_0/stage/lib

So, update the LD_LIBRARY_PATH and C_INCLUDE_PATH accordingly for further usages of Boost.