Re: [boost] backwards compatibility

From: Steve M. Robbins (steve_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-06-02 22:39:34

On Mon, Jun 02, 2008 at 12:26:06PM +0100, Phil Endecott wrote:
> Back in March, Steve M. Robbins wrote to boost_at_[hidden]:
>> [is it] useful for a linux distribution (Debian) to keep
>> multiple versions of Boost available simultaneously; e.g. 1.34.1 and
>> 1.35.  Currently Debian provides only the latest version of Boost.
>
> Hi Steve,
>
> I've just had a look at packages.debian.org and as far as I can see  
> there is a package called libboost1.35-dev, which unpacks headers into  
> /usr/include/boost.  So although you could have e.g. libboost1.36-dev on 
> the Debian ftp server, it would be impossible to actually install both on 
> the same machine since they would conflict over what to put in  
> /usr/include/boost.  Have I understood this correctly?

Yes, that is correct.

Debian has always supported only a single version of the Boost
development package (headers & link libraries) installed at a time.
The recent change is that you can now choose one of two versions to
install: currently 1.34.1 or 1.35.0.

We considered and rejected the idea of having two versions of boost
simultaneously installed [1].  

> I was about to start converting some of my code to 1.35, but I'm less  
> enthusiastic about that if I have to remove 1.34 and so convert  
> everything in one go.

Note that while installing libboost1.35-dev means removing the -dev
package of 1.34.1, you can still retain the 1.34.1 libraries and so
all existing binaries continue to run normally.

You do have to convert in one go all the sourceful projects you
work on.  This has always been the case with Debian.

> Regards,  Phil.
>
> p.s. I just clicked on sumost.ca and see that you've been hacking your  
> digital picture frame.  Me too.  Got Debian running on it yet?

Ha!  No, it's not running Debian.  However, I emailed the company and
they obligingly sent a short document on how to format the RSS feeds.
So I now have a couple of channels generated by half-baked python
scripts.  I should spend some time to cook them up to something more
useful.

-Steve

[1] Thread starting at 
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/04/msg00581.html