Build CentOS7 C++ Compiling Environment with MPI and Boost Library

In this tutorial, I will show how to build a C++ compiling environment from raw CentOS linux. Specifically, OpenMPI and Boost Library is included in this environment.

First, use the following commands to update CentOS repositories

yum update -y

Then, group install the development tools in which gcc is included.

yum groupinstall "Development Tools" -y

Using the following command to install OpenMPI

yum install openmpi openmpi-devel -y

Since the default version of CMake in CentOS7 is rather old, we will install a relative new version. Below commands install some dependent libraries

yum install wget -y
yum install openssl-devel -y

Run the below commands to build and install CMake 3.17

wget https://github.com/Kitware/CMake/releases/download/v3.17.0/cmake-3.17.0.tar.gz
tar -zxvf cmake-3.17.0.tar.gz
cd cmake-3.17.0 
./bootstrap --prefix=/usr/local
make && make install

Now we start to download Boost Libary 1.68.0

wget https://dl.bintray.com/boostorg/release/1.68.0/source/boost_1_68_0.tar.gz
tar -zxvf boost_1_68_0.tar.gz
cd boost_1_68_0

Since we need Boost MPI library, make sure you load the OpenMPI module

source /etc/profile.d/modules.sh
module load mpi/openmpi-x86_64 

Using the below command to compile and install Boost library

./bootstrap.sh
echo "using mpi ;" >> project-config.jam
./b2 threading=multi --with-program_options --with-filesystem --with-serialization --with-mp    i --with-system install

Note the “using mpi ;” string is essential to tell Boost building script to compile Boost MPI Library. If you need other Boost libraries, just add the options –with-xxx where xxx is the library name.

Mission accomplished!