ReplaceLibstdcxx

Package to simplify the replacement of Julia's libstdc++.so.

Note: there are two PRs (JuliaLang/julia#46976 and JuliaLang/julia#45582) for Julia 1.9 around which will probably be also backported to 1.6 and 1.8). I therefore decided not to register this package with the General Registry. It will stay here, nevertheless, in order to help people having similar trouble or workinng with an older Julia version.

Installation

using Pkg
Pkg.add("https://github.com/hhaensel/ReplaceLibstdcxx.jl.git")

or

]add https://github.com/hhaensel/ReplaceLibstdcxx.jl.git

Background

The replacement of Julia's libstdc++.so may sometimes be necessary, when Julia accesses precompiled libraries that require a higher version of libstdc++.so. One example is the usage of the Python package pyarrow via PyCall or PythonCall, which fails with the libstdc++.so that Julia was compiled with. A typical error for a version mismatch is

julia> pyimport("pyarrow")

ERROR: Python: ImportError: /opt/julia-1.8.2/bin/../lib/julia/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.30' not found (required by /home/user123/.julia/conda/3/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pyarrow/../../../libarrow.so.900)

This package provides

• install_libstdcxx() for installing the required libstdc++.so
• replace_libstdcxx() for symlinking the correct libraries
• restore_libstdcxx() for resetting the original state

Usage

- Symlinking to the system's libraries.

If you have an up-to-date system it is highly probable that the system's libstdc++.so has the latest version.

using ReplaceLibstdcxx

replace_libstdcxx()

- Installing the library via PythonCall or PyCall or Conda and symlinking them

using PythonCall
using ReplaceLibstdcxx

install_libstdcxx(PythonCall)
replace_libstdcxx(PythonCall)

You can chose any of the three modules as argument.

- Installing via providing the path to a conda, mamba or micromamba executable and symlinking via provding the lib dir containing the installed libraries.

using ReplaceLibstdcxx

install_libstdcxx(path_to_conda)
replace_libstdcxx(path_to_libdir_containing_libstdc++.so)

After replacing the library links you have to exit Julia and restart to have Julia use the new library.

Finally, all changes can be reset by

restore_libstdcxx()

Note that on some systems you may have to grant admistrator access rights to make the required changes. on Ubuntu you would start Julia with sudo julia. In that case, it might be a good idea to install the libraries as a normal user and to do the replacement via providing the lib dir as admin.