Features/F15Boost146

= Fedora 15 Boost 1.46 Uplift =

Summary
This feature brings Boost 1.46.0 to Fedora 15.

Owner

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

Current status

 * Targeted release: Fedora 15 (and its Feature List)
 * Last updated: 2011-04-22
 * Percentage of completion: 100%
 * The final version of Boost-1.46.1 has been successfully built and submitted to F15 testing (on Mar. 13th, 2011)
 * All the packages depending on Boost-1.46.0-beta1 had been rebuilt
 * Since Boost-1.46.1 only brings (small) bug fixes and documentation updates, there should be no risk of ABI incompatibility

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-1.44.0, folded into devel August 2010.

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 That alternate repository seems to be no longer actively maintained. 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, 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 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 (#656410) 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 15 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 15.

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

Rebuilt for f15, +24 hours asc chess deluge fuse-encfs gnash mapnik pingus python-tag referencer source-highlight

Contingency Plan
Non-completion will result in the F14 boost version, 1.44.0, being used in F15.

Documentation

 * Boost: http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_46_0
 * Boost-CMake: http://github.com/boost-lib/boost-cmake (the previous wiki is now outdated)

Release Notes

 * Boost 1.46.0 Release Notes

http://www.boost.org/users/news/version_1_46_0


 * Boost 1.45.0 Release Notes

http://www.boost.org/users/news/version_1_45_0


 * Boost 1.44.0 Release Notes

http://www.boost.org/users/news/version_1_44_0

Comments and Discussion

 * See Talk:Features/F15Boost146
 * BZ: 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
 * Status
 * Boost-1.46.0-0.4, corresponding to the final 1.46.0 version of Boost, has been successfully built:
 * Rawhide: http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/taskinfo?taskID=2864627 => http://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org/packages/boost/1.46.0/0.4.fc16/
 * F15: http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/taskinfo?taskID=2869175 => http://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org/packages/boost/1.46.0/0.4.fc15/