How to install "cpp" on Alpine Linux

Problem:

When trying to build applications on Alpine Linux, you often see messages like

how-to-install-cpp-on-alpine-linux.txt
Looking for cpp (not found)

but when you try to apk install cpp you see an error message like

example.txt
fetch https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.17/main/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz
fetch https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.17/community/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz
ERROR: unable to select packages:
  cpp (no such package):
    required by: world[cpp]

Solution

cpp is just an alias for any C++ compiler. In practice, that means either installing clang++ or g++. I typically recommend g++, even though both will work for most applications.

Therefore, in order to fix the issue, you can run

example.sh
apk install g++

 


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