Features/F13Boost141

= Fedora 13 Boost 1.41 Uplift =

Summary
That feature brings version 1.41.0 of Boost to Fedora 13, together with Boost.MPI. As a side effect, Boost will be built with CMake (instead of BJam).

Owner

 * Name: Denis Arnaud
 * Email: denis.arnaud_fedora@m4x.org

Current status

 * Targeted release: Fedora 13
 * Last updated: 2010-02-03
 * Percentage of completion: 100%

Detailed Description
Sync top of the Fedora tree to the current upstream release. The current Fedora release is boost-1.39.0, folded into devel 2009-05-07. This upgrade is in keeping with vaguely bi-annual, opportunistic syncing with upstream sources.

In addition, this update changes the canonical sources used for the package from the official Boost release to an alternate repository.

Some background:

Boost ships with an ad-hoc build system named BJam. The Boost development community is exploring alternate build and source code control approaches, including the use of more standard build and release management tools like git and CMake. Which, frankly, the Fedora boost maintainers wish to support. Fortunately for us, a team of developers has worked for over a year on a more standard way to build Boost, thanks to the CMake tool, namely Boost-CMake.

That new way to build Boost allows (at least) two enhancements, when compared to the current build system:
 * Deliver some more libraries, such as Boost.MPI
 * Keep more easily synchronized with the latest Boost versions (Fedora 13 should ship with Boost 1.41.0).

Technical details are available in a Bugzilla-filed enhancement request.

Benefit to Fedora
Syncing with upstream keeps Fedora current. This is part of regular package maintenance.

Scope
Upstream sources for Boost releases are evaluated, along with alternate repositories. One is selected, packaged according to Fedora package conventions and cognizant of existing package practices, tested, evaluated, and then built in Koji. This is then pushed to fedora devel. Dependencies are rebuilt. The unicorns are once again happy, and can go back to drinking champagne and complaining about slow build times.

How To Test

 * No special hardware is needed.
 * Testing of the Boost packages themselves requires the host system to have the boost-test package installed. Testing can then be enabled at package build time by passing --with tests. Note that that testing phase should be done only once per type of architecture and distribution version.
 * Once the Boost packages have been built and checked according to the previous step, testing simply consists in installing them on Fedora 13 and checking that it does not break any other package dependency.
 * Expected results: all the packages depending on Boost (for instance, gnash, pingus, kdeedu or k3d) should work properly on Fedora 13.

Note: for more adventurous developers, the new Boost packages can also be built and installed on other versions of Fedora (beginning with Fedora 12), enabling the soname patch within the specification file according to the Fedora version (for instance, the soname should be 5 on F12 and 4 on F11). But that testing is not required for that feature to be completed: it is just extra sugar.

User Experience
Expected to remain largely the same. New users of boost-mpi, welcome!

Dependencies
There are a large number of dependencies for the boost package in fedora. Here is a non-exhaustive list.

openvrml pingus hugin conexus player mapnik aqsis qpidc deluge rcsslogplayer Miro asc glob2 vegastrike gnash chess pyexiv2 k3d kdeedu python-tag linkage barry rcssserver QuantLib wesnoth mkvtoolnix rb_libtorrent bmpx xmms2 wp_tray fuse-encfs referencer source-highlight HippoDraw rcsserver3d

Contingency Plan
Non-completion will result in the F12 boost version, 1.39.0, being used in F13.

Documentation

 * Boost: http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_41_0
 * Boost-CMake: https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/wiki/CMake

Release Notes

 * Boost 1.40.0 Release Notes

http://www.boost.org/users/history/version_1_40_0


 * Boost 1.41.0 Release Notes

http://www.boost.org/users/history/version_1_41_0

Comments and Discussion

 * See Talk:Features/F13Boost141
 * BZ: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=529563