Re: [Libmesh-users] external boost

[John P. <jwp...@gm...>]

On Thu, Oct 6, 2016 at 12:55 PM, Boyce Griffith <gri...@ci...>
wrote:

>
> On Oct 6, 2016, at 12:43 PM, John Peterson <jwp...@gm...> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 6, 2016 at 9:50 AM, Boyce Griffith <gri...@ci...>
> wrote:
>
>> Folks --
>>
>> Recently, I've started having trouble getting libMesh to recognize
>> external uninstalled boost libraries. I think it used to be easy: just
>> unpack boost somewhere and set BOOST_ROOT to that directory. I don't know
>> if something has changed in libMesh's boost m4, or if this is a change in
>> boost, but now I have to do something like the following:
>>
>> 1) unpack boost
>> 2) go into the boost directory and make a new "include" subdirectory
>> 3) link /path/to/boost_lib/boost to /path/to/boost_lib/include/boost
>> 4) configure libMesh using --with-boost=/path/to/boost_lib
>>
>> Is there some way to avoid steps 2) and 3)?
>>
>
> Hmm... we recently updated the subset of boost bundled with libmesh, but I
> don't think we've changed the m4 code that detects boost installations
> (m4/ax_boost_base.m4) in quite some time.  That m4 test is expecting
> headers to be in $USER_PROVIDED_PATH/include, which I think is still how
> boost gets installed...  You mention that you manually "unpack" boost but
> (presumably) don't use the provided scripts for actually installing it?
> Perhaps that is the issue.
>
>
> In principle, using ax_boost_base.m4 to detect Boost, I believe that if
> you are using header-only Boost libraries, all you need to do is to unpack
> Boost somewhere and set the environment variable BOOST_ROOT. (This is
> actually the logic that appears in ax_boost_base.m4 --- it tries to use
> BOOST_BASE to set up the CPP flags when testing for Boost.)
>
> I am pretty sure that with older versions of libMesh and/or Boost, I was
> able to do this: unpack Boost somewhere, set BOOST_ROOT, and configure
> libMesh. Now, however, the only way that I can reliably get libMesh
> configure to recognize where boost is installed is via --with-boost --- but
> the logic invoked by --with-boost=XXX assumes that XXX points to an
> "installed" version of Boost, so the headers need to be in
> XXX/include/boost.
>
> For instance, if I configure libMesh via:
>
> ./configure --disable-maintainer-mode \
>   --prefix=$HOME/sfw/killdevil/libmesh/master-opt \
>   --with-methods=opt \
>   PETSC_DIR=$HOME/sfw/petsc/current \
>   PETSC_ARCH=killdevil-gcc-opt \
>   CC=mpicc \
>   CXX=mpicxx \
>   CFLAGS="-O3" \
>   CXXFLAGS="-O3" \
>   BOOST_ROOT=$HOME/sfw/boost/boost_1_62_0 \
>   --disable-cxx11 \
>   --disable-openmp \
>   --disable-perflog \
>   --disable-strict-lgpl \
>   --disable-pthreads \
>   --disable-cppthreads \
>   --disable-unique-ptr
>
> I get:
>
> ---------------------------------------------
> ----- Configuring for optional packages -----
> ---------------------------------------------
> checking for boostlib >= 1.57.0... configure: We could not detect the
> boost libraries (version 1.57 or higher). If you have a staged boost
> library (still not installed) please specify $BOOST_ROOT in your
> environment and do not give a PATH to --with-boost option.  If you are sure
> you have boost installed, then check your version number looking in
> <boost/version.hpp>. See http://randspringer.de/boost for more
> documentation.
>
> Note that the error message suggests setting BOOST_ROOT. :-) However,
> looking in configure log, configure does not appear ever to have tried
> using -I$BOOST_ROOT when checking for Boost. This is a little confusing,
> because, as mentioned above, it appears that ax_boost_base.m4 is set up to
> try to use -I$BOOST_ROOT in the Boost CPP flags when testing for Boost.
>



The relevant m4 logic for detecting stuff in $BOOST_ROOT appears to be this
part (?):


            if test "x$BOOST_ROOT" != "x"; then
>                 for libsubdir in $libsubdirs ; do
>                     if ls "$BOOST_ROOT/stage/$libsubdir/libboost_"*
> >/dev/null 2>&1 ; then break; fi
>                 done
>                 if test -d "$BOOST_ROOT" && test -r "$BOOST_ROOT" && test
> -d "$BOOST_ROOT/stage/$libsubdir" && test -r
> "$BOOST_ROOT/stage/$libsubdir"; then
>                     version_dir=`expr //$BOOST_ROOT : '.*/\(.*\)'`
>                     stage_version=`echo $version_dir | sed 's/boost_//' |
> sed 's/_/./g'`
>                         stage_version_shorten=`expr $stage_version :
> '\([[0-9]]*\.[[0-9]]*\)'`
>                     V_CHECK=`expr $stage_version_shorten \>\= $_version`
>                     if test "$V_CHECK" = "1" -a "$ac_boost_lib_path" = ""
> ; then
>                         AC_MSG_NOTICE(We will use a staged boost library
> from $BOOST_ROOT)
>                         BOOST_CPPFLAGS="-I$BOOST_ROOT"
>                         BOOST_LDFLAGS="-L$BOOST_ROOT/stage/$libsubdir"
>                     fi
>                 fi
>             fi




Can you check whether your unpacked boost would fail some/all of these
if-tests, causing BOOST_CPPFLAGS to not be set?

-- 
John