building boost on linux

Question

using the instructions at http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_46_1/more/getting_started/unix-variants.html

I am at the instructions at ./bjam install

Just received the error "skipped 831 targets"

I am pretty sure something is wrong. Anyone done this before on Ubuntu? Can any one help me?

Answer 1

I highly recommend you to use Personal Package Archives (PPAs) if you're on Ubuntu. This one provides

the absolute latest bleeding edge versions of boost, currently 1.47, that works great for my development.

To add this archive to your package database just do

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:purplekarrot/ppa;
sudo apt-get update;

and to install for example Boost.Thread you do

sudo apt-get install libboost-thread-dev;

Why reinvent the wheel? This also prevents you from having to redirect include and library paths in your build settings.

You can find most open source software already packaged on Launchpad PPAs. Here you can search its contents.

This is an example of Ubuntus nice trade-off between user freedom and control.

Note that different PPAs support different combinations of Ubuntu releases. This link is a sample search for boost and 1.46.

This one installs, I guess more tested, 1.46.1 on Natty, Maverick and Karmic alongside existing Boost version using

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tim-klingt/ppa;

and this one install 1.47 on Oeneric, Natty and Maverick by replacing the existing version through

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:purplekarrot/ppa; # Upgrades default boost

You can also undo these operations using the shell command ppa-purge. There is also y-ppa-manager which you can get from, you guessed it, a PPA!

Good luck!

Answer 2

Probably, you need to have administrator privileges to install libraries in /lib or /usr/lib directories. Try sudo ./bjam install