Boost on Ubuntu

This post describes how to install the boost library on Ubuntu.

Install the available package

If it doesn't need to be the latest version of boost, just install the version Ubuntu provides.

sudo apt-get install libboost-all-dev

Install latest version

If you want a more current version of boost than provided by Ubuntu, download and install it manually like showed here. At first download the version you want. I downloaded version 1.60 and also tried with version 1.57, you can chose whichever you want.

wget -O boost_1_60_0.tar.gz http://sourceforge.net/projects/boost/files/boost/1.60.0/boost_1_60_0.tar.gz/download
tar xzvf boost_1_60_0.tar.gz
cd boost_1_60_0/

Install all dependencies required to run boost without problems

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

Prepare the installation with bootstrap. You can define the location it will be installed later with the prefix argument.

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

Then in the final step install boost with b2.

sudo ./b2 install