Assuming external software is installed in /usr/local/bin/, Boost was already installed : boost: /usr/include/boost if boost not found use yum to install. 1) yum install boost cmake must be installed: 1) download latest cmake 2) check out the README.rst 3) run ./bootstrap && make && make install 4) add the following to your .bashrc PATH=/usr/local/cmake/bin:$PATH export PATH Then run: source ~user/.bashrc echo $PATH // to check if cmake in the PATH. cmake --version // to check if the version is right, should be cmake version lastest version install g++ 4.7 (since CentOS is a bit behind on this) use: 1) cd /etc/yum.repos.d 2) wget http://people.centos.org/tru/devtools/devtools.repo 3) yum --enablerepo=testing-devtools-6 install devtoolset-1.0 4) export PATH=/opt/centos/devtoolset-1.0/root/usr/bin/:$PATH (might as well add this to .bashrc ) To install sdsl-lite: git clone https://github.com/simongog/sdsl-lite.git First got to the /sdsl-lite/external/libdivsufsort-2.0.1/ 1) read INSTALL 2) run the command in the INSTALL file cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE="Release" -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="/usr/local" .. make make install 3) cd back up 4) run: ./install.sh /usr/local untar twin package 1) run make