CGAL users discussion list

[Joachim Reichel <>]

Hi mm,

On 08/19/2011 06:49 PM, mm wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I am working for a university project and part of it requires cgal. 
> I'm using Ubuntu 11.04 and cgal can be installed directly through Ubuntu's
> package management system, in my case using Synaptic. I install libcgal-dev
> (version 3.6.1), which asks for libboost-dev and libboost1.42-dev as
> dependencies. Now, you must know that the project I'm working on also
> requires a boost version newer than 1.42, at least 1.44. So, when I install
> libcgal-dev and its dependencies, it gives me the error:
> E: /var/cache/apt/archives/libboost1.42-dev_1.42.0-4ubuntu2_i386.deb: trying
> to overwrite '/usr/include/boost/exception.hpp', which is also in package
> libboost-exception-dev 110812-natty

It seems it is not possible to install libboost1.42-dev and
libboost-exception-dev at the same time on Ubuntu natty. I don't whether
this is by design or on error. You should ask the Ubuntu people for that.

> I can then use cgal, as it is kind of installed, but Ubuntu will continue to
> say that there is a broken package and I must fix it before I can update or
> install any other package. So, I always need to uninstall cgal, reinstall
> libboost-dev (which resolves the actual "broken dependencies" error), do my
> updates/installs and then reinstall cgal, resulting in a broken dependency,
> again.
> 
> Somebody from #ubuntu on freenode recommended to write to the list, as this
> might be a bug. Can it be, for example, that libcgal-dev in version 3.6.1
> requires libboost-dev's version to be equal to 1.42 and not equal or newer
> than 1.42?

The CGAL packages in Ubuntu natty most likely have been setup and build
against boost 1.42, which means they require boost 1.42 if you want to
install them. It should be possible to update the packaging to use a
newer boost version.

If you don't want to/can't do that yourself there seem to be two options:
1) Build CGAL yourself from source, as recommended by Amy.
2) Use a newer CGAL package from Ubuntu oneiric or Debian squeeze (CGAL
3.8 / Boost 1.46).

Joachim