dpkg -L shows almost no files in apt libboost-all-dev package

Question

I installed Boost library on my ubuntu 18 using apt:

sudo apt-get install libboost-all-dev

however, I cannot find boost library files on my machine. When I try:

dpkg -L libboost-all-dev

the output is:

/.
/usr
/usr/share
/usr/share/doc
/usr/share/doc/libboost-all-dev
/usr/share/doc/libboost-all-dev/copyright
/usr/share/doc/libboost-all-dev/changelog.gz

No headers, no .so files! Am I doing something wrong? I'm getting the compilation error:

/usr/bin/x86_64-linux-gnu-ld: cannot find -lboost_random-mt

Because the actual files are provided by the dependencies, which are version-specific dev packages: libboost-all-dev depends on libboost-chrono-dev depends on libboost-chrono1.58-dev, which contains the actual files. — muru, Jul 27 '18 at 07:09
@muru write your comment as answer. Do not forget to add link to the file list of libboost-all-dev. — N0rbert, Jul 27 '18 at 08:17
@N0rbert wouldn't help with OP's actual problem (the missing random-mt library). — muru, Jul 27 '18 at 08:18
@muru, right, did not see this point. @Przemysław Czechowski - are you sure that you need -mt suffix? Asking because of the fact that libboost_random.* is available. — N0rbert, Jul 27 '18 at 08:29
@muru, I see, dependencies explain everything! So dpkg -L is not the perfect tool to see what files I installed. I would accept it if you write it as an answer. — Przemysław Czechowski, Jul 27 '18 at 09:15
@N0rbert yes, removing -mt already solves the problem. I've learned that this is removed, because newer version of boost are already thread-safe by default. — Przemysław Czechowski, Jul 27 '18 at 09:16

N0rbert · Accepted Answer · 2018-07-27T10:04:16.237

1

As you can see from the list of libboost-all-dev package it contains only two files. It is normal.

But it has very long list of dependencies.

About your libboost_random libraries. You can find them in libboost-random1.58-dev and libboost-random1.62-dev, libboost-random1.65-dev packages.

But the most safe way will be install them as dependency of libboost-random-dev as dependency of libboost-all-dev:

sudo apt-get install libboost-all-dev

So Boost packaging looks very complicated ...

edited Jul 27 '18 at 10:04

answered Jul 27 '18 at 09:24

N0rbert

99,918

1

libboost-all-dev will bring in libboost-random-dev too. – muru Jul 27 '18 at 09:48

dpkg -L shows almost no files in apt libboost-all-dev package

1 Answers1

Linked