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I'm on Ubuntu, and I want to install Boost. I tried with

sudo apt-get install boost

But there was no such package. What is the best way to install Boost on Ubuntu?

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10 Answers 10

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1162

You can use apt-get command (requires sudo)

sudo apt-get install libboost-all-dev

Or you can call

aptitude search boost

find packages you need and install them using the apt-get command.

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12 Comments

do you have any past experience with boost?
I had programming experience with boost, but not installation experience. I have never tried this myself, so I can't say if it is easy to use (but it seems to me that package manager is the easiest way). I should have posted this suggestion as a comment, but I can't comment questions.
The one disadvantage of using apt-get is that it is usually a couple of version behind the latest boost release.
It is easy to build and install Boost from the sources, for example anycoder.wordpress.com/2014/04/28/building-boost
Do not use the packaged version of boost, right now on Ubuntu 16.04 it's 1.58, and the latest stable version is 1.67.0 ! See the response and my comment below : stackoverflow.com/a/41272796/2617716
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Get the version of Boost that you require. This is for 1.55 but feel free to change or manually download yourself:

wget -O boost_1_55_0.tar.gz https://sourceforge.net/projects/boost/files/boost/1.55.0/boost_1_55_0.tar.gz/download tar xzvf boost_1_55_0.tar.gz cd boost_1_55_0/

Get the required libraries, main ones are icu for boost::regex support:

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install build-essential g++ python-dev autotools-dev libicu-dev libbz2-dev libboost-all-dev

Boost's bootstrap setup:

./bootstrap.sh --prefix=/usr/

Then build it with:

./b2

and eventually install it:

sudo ./b2 install
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12 Comments

What will be the difference if we use ./bootstrap.sh --prefix=/usr/include ? I have the boost library in /usr/include. I was wondering that by doing this, can I replace my old installation ?
what is libboost-all-dev ? why should I install boost before installing boost?
@tbc0 Boost is at version 1.59 now, and the latest PPA is at 1.55, so building from source is relevant
sudo ./b2 install builds it as well. You don't have to call ./b2 beforehand.
this is nice but it screws up cmake
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Installing Boost on Ubuntu with an example of using boost::array:

Install libboost-all-dev and aptitude:

sudo apt install libboost-all-dev sudo apt install aptitude aptitude search boost

Then paste this into a C++ file called main.cpp:

#include <iostream> #include <boost/array.hpp> using namespace std; int main(){ boost::array<int, 4> arr = {{1,2,3,4}}; cout << "hi" << arr[0]; return 0; }

Compile like this:

g++ -o s main.cpp

Run it like this:

./s

Program prints:

hi1
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3 Comments

There is an error in the line "boost::array<int, 4> arr = {{1,2,3,4}};", it should be "boost::array<int, 4> arr = {1,2,3,4};"
why do i want to run aptitude search boost?
adding "<< endl;" to the"cout" line was required to flush the buffer and make my output show when running in a terminal.
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Get the version of Boost that you require. This is for version 1.55 but feel free to change or manually download yourself (Boost download page):

wget -O boost_1_55_0.tar.gz https://sourceforge.net/projects/boost/files/boost/1.55.0/boost_1_55_0.tar.gz/download tar xzvf boost_1_55_0.tar.gz cd boost_1_55_0/

Get the required libraries, main ones are icu for boost::regex support:

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install build-essential g++ python3-dev autotools-dev libicu-dev libbz2-dev

Boost's bootstrap setup:

./bootstrap.sh --prefix=/usr/local

If we want MPI then we need to set the flag in the user-config.jam file:

user_configFile=`find $PWD -name user-config.jam` echo "using mpi ;" >> $user_configFile

Find the maximum number of physical cores:

n=`cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep "cpu cores" | uniq | awk '{print $NF}'`

Install boost in parallel:

sudo ./b2 --with=all -j $n install

Assumes you have /usr/local/lib setup already. if not, you can add it to your LD LIBRARY PATH:

sudo sh -c 'echo "/usr/local/lib" >> /etc/ld.so.conf.d/local.conf'

Reset the ldconfig:

sudo ldconfig
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6 Comments

Some things such as PO Edit 2.0 require boost 1.6, which is not available at this time via apt-get you can get this from boost.org/users/history/version_1_60_0.html and then expand it. Follow the excellent instructions above, remembering that LD Library Path is not the same as $PATH
Please change the link to HTTPS; HTTP isn't safe for binary downloads :)
Comment from a recent installation, to get the latest version : - Go to boost.org and "Current release" downloads to get the last one (currently 1.67.0 : dl.bintray.com/boostorg/release/1.67.0/source/…) Thanks !
haha this screws up my system for good. i think it's the last 2 items.
old link to sourceforge is not working. use dl.bintray.com/boostorg/release/1.72.0/source/… (with needed version)
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An update for Windows 10 Ubuntu Application via Subsystem (also works on standard Ubuntu):

You might have problems finding the package. If you do, never fear! PPA is here!

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:boost-latest/ppa sudo apt-get update

Then run:

sudo apt-get install libboost-all-dev
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6 Comments

OP didn't ask for Win10.
I'm aware, posting for those (Like me) who were looking for a rounded solution. Similar to Алексей Штыков's Answer
@AdrianW this answer isn't about Windows 10. It's about Ubuntu that happens to be running on a Windows 10 kernel, so it's a valid solution to those running Ubuntu in some way. Since the question didn't limit it to Ubuntu running on a Linux kernel specifically, this solution is fine.
The repository 'ppa.launchpad.net/boost-latest/ppa/ubuntu xenial Release' does not have a Release file.
I am having following erro: E: The repository 'http://ppa.launchpad.net/boost-latest/ppa/ubuntu focal Release' does not have a Release file.
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You can install boost on ubuntu by using the following commands:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install libboost-all-dev

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11

First try the following:

$ sudo apt-get install libboost*

You may get an error message similar to the following, like I did:

E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

Then try install below package:

$ sudo apt-get install libboost-all-dev

Now you can create a a sample project utilizing Boost:

$ mkdir boost $ cd boost/ $ cat > main.cpp &
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Actually you don't need "install" or "compile" anything before using Boost in your project. You can just download and extract the Boost library to any location on your machine, which is usually like /usr/local/.

When you compile your code, you can just indicate the compiler where to find the libraries by -I. For example, g++ -I /usr/local/boost_1_59_0 xxx.hpp.

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3 Comments

This would only work for header libraries of boost. The rest of them would need to be built or installed using a package manager as described in the above answers. The boost libraries that require separate building and installation are the following: atomic, chrono, container, context, coroutine, coroutine2, date_time, exception, filesystem, graph, graph_parallel, iostreams, locale, log, math, mpi, program_options, python, random, regex, serialization, signals, system, test, thread, timer, type_erasure, wave.
Even repairing this solution by following Elias Kouskoumvekakis's further instructions would be a bad idea (unless you have a good reason), since package managers add the ability to very easily update Boost to newer versions (in Ubuntu, just a sudo apt update; sudo apt upgrade to upgrade all your packages to the latest versions in the repositories) if you find the appropriate package repository for Boost and to very easily delete Boost from the system if you want to. The manual approach makes those tasks harder, so you need a good reason to skip out on the benefits of a package manager.
Also, installing without a package manager is better covered in an earlier answer, which includes necessary building instructions.
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Install libboost-all-dev by entering the following commands in the terminal

Step 1

Update package repositories and get latest package information.

sudo apt update -y

Step 2

Install the packages and dependencies with -y flag .

sudo apt install -y libboost-all-dev

Now that you have your libboost-all-dev installed source: https://packages.ubuntu.com/focal/libboost-all-dev

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I was looking for any small guides - how to install boost latest release in Rocky Linux, however the same guide applies for any Generic Linux (CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, Rocky, Fedora)

  1. Download and extract the latest Boost release, inside the folder
sudo ./bootstrap.sh --prefix=/usr sudo ./b2 install --with=all

Check Boost version with

#include<iostream> #include <boost/version.hpp> int main(){ std::cout << "Using Boost " << BOOST_VERSION / 100000 << "." // major version << BOOST_VERSION / 100 % 1000 << "." // minor version << BOOST_VERSION % 100 // patch level << std::endl; return 0; }
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