Features/F16Boost147

= Fedora 16 Boost 1.47 Uplift =

Summary
This feature brings Boost 1.47.0 to Fedora 16.

Owner

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

Current status

 * Targeted release: Fedora 16 (and its Feature List)
 * Last updated: 2011-09-22
 * Percentage of completion: 100%
 * Boost 1.47.0 has been released in July 2011.
 * The builds have been successful for Rawhide on Koji for both the i386 and x86_64 architectures -- darnaud (Talk  - Contrib ) 02:27, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Rebuilds of packages that I tried (about 15% of all Boost clients) progressed well. Boost 1.47.0 built for real.  Now owners of client packages are expected to rebuild their packages to pick up the update -- pmachata  (Talk  - Contrib ) 16:22, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Boost-1.47 has been in used by Fedora Rawhide and Fedora 16 for almost two months already, and there is no non-closed blocking bug -- darnaud (Talk  - Contrib ) 12:28, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Detailed Description
That feature aims at synchronising the top of the Fedora tree with the current Boost upstream release. The current Fedora release is boost-1.46.0, folded into devel February 2011.

As of Fedora 13, the canonical sources used for the package switched from the official Boost release (with BJam build) to an alternate repository (with CMake build, for boost-1.41.0). That alternate repository has been deprecated and should soon be deleted (as of June 2011). boost-1.41.0 has been delivered from that (now deprecated) Boost-CMake repository (hosted on Gitorious), where the code base had slightly diverged from upstream.

From Fedora 14, boost-1.44.0 has been rebased on upstream, with a mere patch implementing CMake support. Moreover, there is a new Git repository reflecting those changes, hosted on GitHub (and cloned on Gitorious). That repository relies on the Ryppl project (in particular, on the Boost Subversion replicated repository), created and maintained by two talented Boost developers, namely Eric Niebler and Dave Abrahams.

The objective is now to keep delivering the latest stable Boost release for each new Fedora and RedHat releases.

Some background:


 * Boost package in Fedora
 * Boost build status in Koji
 * Fedora 15 Boost-1.46 Feature
 * Fedora 14 Boost-1.44 Feature
 * Fedora 13 Boost-1.41 Feature
 * Boost ships with an ad-hoc build system named BJam.

Technical details are available in a Bugzilla-filed (#711845) enhancement request.

Benefit to Fedora
Syncing with upstream keeps Fedora current. This is part of regular package maintenance.
 * With every new release of Boost come new components and libraries. For instance, Boost 1.46 brings ICL, and Boost 1.45 had already brought MSM and Polygon.
 * Moreover, the existing components and libraries are enhanced with new features and bug fixes. For instance, the Boost.Math components have now become better than the GSL for support to statistical analysis.

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 16 and checking that it does not break any other package dependency.
 * Expected results: all the packages depending on Boost (for instance, hugin, gnash, pingus, kdeedu or k3d) should work properly on Fedora 16.

User Experience
Expected to remain largely the same.

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

aqsis asc avogadro barry bastet bmpx CGAL chess conexus dchroot deluge easystroke enblend esperanza fuse-encfs fusecommon 1:fife glob2 glom gnash gnote gnuradio gpsdrive HippoDraw hugin libpst-python LuxRender lyx k3d kdeedu linkage mapnik Miro mkvtoolnix openvrml pingus player pokerth pyexiv2 pymilia python-gnash python-polybori python-tag qbittorent qpidc QuantLib rb_libtorrent rcsserver3d rcsslogplayer rcssserver referencer rmol schroot simspark soci source-highlight spring torium twinkle urge usrp vegastrike vigra-python wesnoth widelands wp_tray xmms2 xsd

Contingency Plan
Non-completion will result in the F15 boost version, 1.46.0, being used in F16.

Documentation

 * Boost: http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_46_1
 * Boost-CMake: http://github.com/pocb/boost (the previous wiki is now outdated)

Release Notes
http://www.boost.org/users/news/version_1_47_0
 * Boost 1.47.0 Release Notes

http://www.boost.org/users/news/version_1_46_1
 * Boost 1.46.1 Release Notes

http://www.boost.org/users/news/version_1_45_0
 * Boost 1.45.0 Release Notes

http://www.boost.org/users/news/version_1_44_0
 * Boost 1.44.0 Release Notes

Comments and Discussion

 * See Talk:Features/F16Boost147
 * BZ: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=711845
 * for Fedora 15 and Boost-1.46: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=656410
 * for Fedora 14 and Boost-1.44: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=607615
 * for Fedora 13 and Boost-1.41: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=529563