Hi everyone,

I have been trying to install povray for a while now on the stampede2 cluster
(TACC) and I keep getting the following error:

configure: error: We could not detect the boost libraries (version 1.37 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.

BOOST is by default installed on the stampede2 cluster however povray does not
detect it.

I have installed boost locally several times with several versions and still get
the same error. I have linked it, set it in my environment like it asks me too
and it gives the same error. I saw this was posted before with some sort of
solution (a very vague solution) and nothing has worked. I see many people with
this same error.


Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you all,

Daniel M

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Hello Daniel !
You have to provide more informations!
How do configure povray ? (./configure .......)
In the BUILD-directory is a file config.log. This file shows what happened.

greetings

Thomas

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Am 12.01.2019 um 01:22 schrieb DanielM:

> I have been trying to install povray for a while now on the stampede2 cluster
> (TACC) and I keep getting the following error:
> 
> configure: error: We could not detect the boost libraries (version 1.37 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.

 From the message I'm inferring that you are trying to install POV-Ray 
v3.7, as the current v3.8 development versions require at least boost 1.38.

First of all, make sure you're trying v3.7.0.8; earlier versions of v3.7 
have known issues when it comes to building on modern environments.

You may also want to give v3.8 a try - it's still in development, but 
there is some chance that the issue happens to has been eliminated there.

> I saw this was posted before with some sort of
> solution (a very vague solution) and nothing has worked. I see many people with
> this same error.

I'd expect the Stampede 2 cluster to provide a sufficiently non-standard 
environment that the root cause for the symptoms may differ from 
anything other POV-Ray users have experienced in the past.

> Any help would be greatly appreciated!

If the above suggestions don't help, maybe the most promising way to go 
would be to kidnap(*) an Automake expert and force them to take a few 
good looks at our Unix build process. I know I for one won't be of much 
help, being primarily a Windows jockey.

(*Don't. I've heard that's illegal in some contries.)


In any case, we'll need to know the exact version you're trying to 
build, and the full contents of the config.log file. The console output 
of both ./prebuild.sh and the configure script might also be helpful.

We don't know what exactly we're looking for here, so every scrap of 
information might be valuable.

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On 1/11/19 7:22 PM, DanielM wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I have been trying to install povray for a while now on the stampede2 cluster
> (TACC) and I keep getting the following error:
> 
> configure: error: We could not detect the boost libraries (version 1.37 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.
> 
> BOOST is by default installed on the stampede2 cluster however povray does not
> detect it.

POV-Ray leans on autotools' automake/autoconf m4 scripts to determine 
the header and library locations. These scripts sometimes don't work 
with new-ish or non-standard hardware/software set ups. This would be my 
first guess as to what's wrong here.

> 
> I have installed boost locally several times with several versions and still get
> the same error. I have linked it, set it in my environment like it asks me too
> and it gives the same error. I saw this was posted before with some sort of
> solution (a very vague solution) and nothing has worked. I see many people with
> this same error.
> 
> 
> Any help would be greatly appreciated!
> 
> Thank you all,
> 
> Daniel M
> 

Supposing the latest 3.7 patch or 3.8(1) code.

Then, if you know where your system's boost headers and libraries are 
located, you should be able to use --with-boost and --with-boost-libdir 
to point to them, respectively. Though on my Ubuntu 18.04 machine the 
header and library locations are automatically detected, such explicit 
header/library settings are:

./configure COMPILED_BY="wfp" --with-boost=/usr 
--with-boost-libdir=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu

The automake boost M4 scripts will expand the argument to the first flag 
to expect /usr/include/boost/* for the headers and 
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libboost* for the .so and .a libraries with 
the second. Here (*) a wildcard char as might be used with the ls command.

I recommend pointing to whatever boost is already installed on your 
system as it might well have patches/settings for an exotic machine such 
as yours. Further, boost is made of many components of which POV-Ray 
needs three. See <pov code dir>/unix/README.md for the boost  component 
library list. Note. There are corrections to this file in the 3.8 branch 
over what 3.7 releases have though the listed boost components are the 
same.

The BOOST_ROOT stuff has to do with some staging convention about which 
I know nothing - don't set it unless you do.

And... If you get POV-Ray going on this machine, I think many of us 
would be very interested in results! :-)

Bill P.

(1): With the latter stay away from the most recent development release 
(Jan 11 alpha.10008988+av637) as it has a somewhat serious parser bug. 
Use the previous development release or a later fixed one when it 
becomes available.

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Daniel,
I would also like to use POV-ray 3.7 on Stampede2. Did you get it to compile?
What are your strategies for splitting your rendering across multi-core nodes?
Currently my 24-core machine, although all mine, will take at least 6 months to
complete just a subset of the images I want, so any Stampede time would be
welcome. I could possibly get access to other TACC machines too. -John.

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