Are the boost headers separately packaged under Fedora?
Looking at the boost-devel package, it requires the boost package of the same version. Here is what the boost-devel package requires:
$ rpm -qRp boost-devel-1.44.0-7.fc14.x86_64.rpm
boost = 1.44.0-7.fc14
cmake
libboost_date_time-mt.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_date_time.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_filesystem-mt.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_filesystem.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_graph-mt.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_graph.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_iostreams-mt.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_iostreams.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_prg_exec_monitor-mt.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_prg_exec_monitor.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_program_options-mt.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_program_options.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_python-mt.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_python.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_random-mt.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_random.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_regex-mt.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_regex.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_serialization-mt.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_serialization.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_signals-mt.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_signals.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_system-mt.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_system.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_thread-mt.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_unit_test_framework-mt.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_unit_test_framework.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_wave-mt.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_wserialization-mt.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
libboost_wserialization.so.1.44.0()(64bit)
rpmlib(CompressedFileNames) <= 3.0.4-1
rpmlib(FileDigests) <= 4.6.0-1
rpmlib(PayloadFilesHavePrefix) <= 4.0-1
rpmlib(VersionedDependencies) <= 3.0.3-1
rpmlib(PayloadIsXz) <= 5.2-1
The boost-devel package is the only package that has the boost header files, and it requires the other packages, so the answer to your question is: No, there are no packages you can install that would only provide the headers. Fedora packages typically have their -devel
packages require the other package that includes any libraries used to compile using the headers in the package, as is in this case.