Debian: unable to locate package opencv, known to exist

Question

I'm running wheezy Debian on a BeagleBone:

root@beaglebone:~# cat /etc/*-release
PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 7 (wheezy)"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="7"
VERSION="7 (wheezy)"
ID=debian
ANSI_COLOR="1;31"
HOME_URL="http://www.debian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="http://www.debian.org/support/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="http://bugs.debian.org/"

uname -a
Linux beaglebone 3.8.13-bone71.1 #1 SMP Wed May 20 20:13:27 PDT 2015 armv7l GNU/Linux

I'm trying to install opencv from the wheezy repository. I get the following error:

sudo apt-get install opencv
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package opencv

Because of the opencv hyperlink I've provided above, I assumed this package would be available from the standard wheezy repositories. My sources.list file is the following:

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free 
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ wheezy-updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ wheezy-updates main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main contrib non-free

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian wheezy-backports main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian wheezy-backports main contrib non-free

#Kernel source (repos.rcn-ee.net) : https://github.com/RobertCNelson/linux-stable-rcn-ee
#
#git clone https://github.com/RobertCNelson/linux-stable-rcn-ee
#cd ./linux-stable-rcn-ee
#git checkout `uname -r` -b tmp
# deb [arch=armhf] http://repos.rcn-ee.net/debian/ wheezy main deb-src [arch=armhf] http://repos.rcn-ee.net/debian/ wheezy main

I have reviewed several similar questions and not found the answers helpful. I have also successfully updated apt-get, sudo apt-get update.

If anyone has any insight into (1) whether I can download opencv using apt-get, and if so (2) how to alleviate this issue, I'd be most appreciative. Thanks!

Answer 1

That's because the package is most likely not called "opencv". Try first "apt-cache search opencv". It gives a list of possible packages.

Answer 2

Please take a look at the packages website. https://packages.debian.org/source/wheezy/opencv

It is a source package, not a binary. And from these source packages are a lot of binary packages built, which are listed on the website. But none of them is named "opencv".

If you want to install opencv, you really want to install some or all of these binary packages, but not a package "opencv".