Find version of development library from command line?

You can quickly find what version or where a library is, even if you do not quite know the title, with dpkg, and, in your case, using boost as the query term:

dpkg -l '*boost*'

and then query dpkg again with this option for a full list of file locations now you know the name of the file:

dpkg -L <'name of lib'>

The name of the library may, for example, be libboost1.46-dev.

ldconfig -v requires sudo.

All you really need is to query it, so this will do.

ldconfig -p | grep [name]

Use ldconfig -v to print libraries and current version number and grep to filter your results ldconfig -v | grep [name].