I've just committed some changes to bcp that give it a shortened list option: bcp --list-short truncates the list so you just see directory names where appropriate, for example: bcp --list-short shared_ptr.hpp Gives the dependency list: boost/assert.hpp boost/checked_delete.hpp boost/config.hpp boost/config boost/current_function.hpp boost/detail boost/mpl boost/non_type.hpp boost/preprocessor boost/shared_ptr.hpp boost/static_assert.hpp boost/throw_exception.hpp boost/type.hpp boost/type_traits boost/version.hpp which is reasonably nice and compact :-) Now, here's the question: what did the folks who were asking for this functionality actually want to use the information for? I should stress that it's overkill for extracting subsets of Boost, because many libraries will depend on just one or two files inside boost/mpl or boost/preprocessor, so using the list for that purpose will result in an even "thicker" dependency than copying with bcp already produces. It's possible to contract the above list even further: for example by contracting to library names where possible, so for example contracting all of: boost/regex.hpp boost/regex libs/regex to just "regex" However there would still be a lot of Boost headers that can't automatically be assigned to any library name, so it's not clear to me how much use this would be? If folks can give me an idea of what they were looking to use a dependency list for it'll help me decide whether to stop here or to continue trying to contract the list further. John.