Compression libraries such as zlib and zstd ought to be first class boost libraries

From: Nigel Stewart (nigels.com_at_[hidden])
Date: 2024-05-01 06:14:13

Hello all,

I've been having a fairly hard time enabling zlib and zstd for boost 1.85.0
so we can make use of the compression support in iostreams module.  We do
have some specifics - static linking, non-standard file names and not
system-installed.  Windows and Linux.

For various reasons it looks like we're going to copy certain files into
our modules, rather than puzzle over making this work.  It's not ideal, but
workable.  But along the way it's become clear that this functionality is
not first-class boost citizen.  Such as the broken links in the
documentation, and various historical questions via google reporting
similar issues.  There are also other copies of zlib in the beast tree,
because it's obviously needed for HTTP stuff too.  zstd too?

So I did think that I should at least mention that zlib, zstd, bzip2 and
xv-utils all ought to be promoted to first-class boost libraries even
though the majority of the maintenance is coming from upstream.  They ought
to be part of the "big tarball" and enabled and built by default
regardless of what happens to be installed on the system.  The cmake stuff
ought to "just work" the way it does for other boost modules.

I'm not quite volunteering myself, but it seems like a start to pose the
question.
The developer experience could be significantly improved for this
particular corner of things.

- Nigel Stewart