Features/F17Boost148

= Fedora 17 Boost 1.48 Uplift =

Summary
This feature brings Boost 1.48.0 to Fedora 17.

Owner

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

Current status

 * Targeted release: Fedora 17 (and its Feature List)
 * Last updated: 2012-02-15
 * Percentage of completion: 100%
 * As of mid-February, no blocking bug is remaining
 * Boost 1.48.0 has been released in November 2011.
 * The builds have been successful for Rawhide on Koji for both the i386 and x86_64 architectures -- darnaud (Talk  - Contrib ) 12:50, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
 * A ticket has been open for the release engineering team to support in the rebuilding process of the dependant packages -- darnaud (Talk  - Contrib ) 16:28, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
 * It is not up to the release engineering team to support such massive rebuilds. A specific distribution tag should be created for Boost, instead. Then, the massive rebuild would be performed against that specific tag. There has been a discussion on the Fedora-devel mailing list about that topic. -- darnaud (Talk  - Contrib ) 16:38, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Almost all the dependencies have been rebuilt on Fedora Rawhide. Only a few packages are still failing to rebuild (FTBFS bugs need to be created). See https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=754865 for more details.

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-1.47.0, folded into devel July 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 may be deleted any time soon (as of November 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 16 Boost-1.47 Feature
 * 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 (#754865) 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 1.48 brings Container, Locale and Move, and Boost 1.47 had already brought Chrono, Geometry, Phoenix and Ratio.
 * Moreover, the existing components and libraries are enhanced with new features and bug fixes. For instance, to name a few, Asio, Chrono, Geometry, Maths, Spirit have benefited from numerous bug fixes and small evolutions.

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. Following is a non-exhaustive list, collected from the first Rawhide report:

airrac airsched akonadi aqsis aqsis-core aqsis-libs asc avogadro avogadro-libs barry bastet cclive cegui-python CGAL collada-dom compiz compiz-fusion-extras compiz-fusion-unsupported compiz-gtk compiz-kde compiz-plugins-main easystroke ekiga ember esteid-browser-plugin fatrat fawkes-plugin-player fife flush fusecompress fuse-encfs gearmand glob2 glom glom-libs gnash gnash-cygnal gnash-klash gnuradio gpsdrive guitarix HippoDraw-python hugin hugin-base iwhd k3d kalzium kalzium-libs kig libcompizconfig libmapi libmongodb libopenvrml libopenvrml-gl libpst-python LuxRender LuxRender-core LuxRender-devel LuxRender-lib lyx mapnik mapnik-python mapnik-utils mbox2eml minion mkvtoolnix mkvtoolnix-gui mmseq mongodb mongodb-server mygui mygui-demos mygui-devel mygui-tools nss-gui ogre ogre-samples ompl OpenImageIO openvrml-java openvrml-javascript openvrml-nodes openvrml-xembed pdns perl-qpid pingus player plee-the-bear pokerth pyactivemq pyexiv2 pymilia python-gnash python-polybori python-tag python-visual qbittorrent qbittorrent-nox qpid-cpp-client qpid-cpp-client-devel qpid-cpp-client-rdma qpid-cpp-client-ssl qpid-cpp-server qpid-cpp-server-cluster qpid-cpp-server-rdma qpid-cpp-server-ssl qpid-cpp-server-store qpid-cpp-server-xml qpid-qmf QuantLib-test rb_libtorrent rb_libtorrent-examples rb_libtorrent-python rcsslogplayer rcssmonitor rcssserver rmol ruby-qpid-qmf schroot simfqt simspark source-highlight spring springlobby stdair swift tncfhh-examples tncfhh-libs travelccm twinkle undertaker vegastrike vigra-python votca-csg votca-csg-libs votca-tools wesnoth wesnoth-server wesnoth-tools wlmproxy xsd zarafa-server

Contingency Plan
Non-completion will result in the F16 boost version, 1.47.0, being used in F17.

Documentation

 * Boost: http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_47_0
 * Boost-CMake: http://github.com/pocb/boost (the previous wiki is now outdated)

Release Notes
http://www.boost.org/users/news/version_1_48_0
 * Boost 1.48.0 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/F17Boost148
 * BZ: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=754865
 * for Fedora 16 and Boost-1.47: 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