Installing boost on Mac OS X

1. Download latest Boost Source code (1.44.0)
2. Put the source tarfile in ~/source/ and untar it, then cd to ~/source/boost_1_44_0/

3. Configure Boost to use Python:

      ./bootstrap.sh --prefix=$HOME/source/boost_install --with-libraries=python,signals,thread 
   

4. Compile the shared libraries and copy the header files:

      ./bjam -j2 variant=release link=shared install 
   

5. Add this to ~/.bash_profile:

      export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH="$HOME/source/boost_install/lib:${DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH}"
   

6. Create a ~/.aksetup-defaults.py and fill it with the following (fill in your home directory name):

      BOOST_INC_DIR=['/Users/<MY_HOME_DIR_NAME>/source/boost_install/include']
      BOOST_LIB_DIR=['/Users/<MY_HOME_DIR_NAME>/source/boost_install/lib']
      BOOST_PYTHON_LIBNAME=['boost_python'] 
   

Finally: Close your terminal window and open a new one to load the new DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH (or re-source your ~/.bash_profile)