Re: [boost] Aggregate usage statistics request for Boost

Subject: Re: [boost] Aggregate usage statistics request for Boost
From: Dimitri John Ledkov (xnox_at_[hidden])
Date: 2019-05-03 13:20:09

On Fri, 3 May 2019 at 10:03, Joshua Marshall <jrmarsha_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
> Hello all,
>
> A few of us with Boost are trying to decide support of different compilers.  I know that Ubuntu collects some anonymized statistics which could help us some.  Could someone please collect and forward the following bits of information to boost_at_[hidden] :
> Install base size of Ubuntu 14.04 to 19.04
> Per OS version, what versions of GCC, Clang, and Boost are installed on what percentage of the install base.
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>From Ubuntu development point of view, our biggest concern is that no
stable releases of boost claim to be supported or tested with the next
GCC compiler.

For example, for 19.10 we will be switching to GCC-9 by default, yet
boost 1.70.0 primary test compilers do not include GCC-9 for Linux.
Ideally, we would like to see boost upstream include next-gcc as part
of primary or additional test compilers for every boost release.

W.R.T. Install base size ratios and which boosts are in use -> we do
not have statistics on what you are asking for. I.e. default compilers
are installed on all systems (to support dkms), some boost runtime
libraries are also always installed as quite a few packages depend on
boost runtimes. And dev packages are not tracked and impossible to
tell if they are installed by accident or on purpose.

We can say generically, that our LTS releases are used a lot more than
non-LTS releases, and thus by extension default compilers and boost
versions within those are used more. And LTS cycles do follow an
overlap, where for a while after one LTS release, the previous LTS is
the most popular, and then it rolls over eventually.

Our default compiler is GCC for all packages. LLVM toolchain is used
for mesa and intel graphics compiler, and like that's it. Mesa
requirements are what drives LLVM toolchain updates in Ubuntu.

Next LTS
20.04 -> to be determined

Current Development
19.10 -> 1.67.0, gcc 8.3 being switched to gcc 9, clang 8.0 (or newer)

Current LTS releases (most popular at the moment)
18.04 -> 1.65.1, gcc 7.4, clang 6.0
16.04 -> 1.58.0, gcc 5.3, clang 3.8

Past basic support, in Extended Maintainance Support LTS (very old,
and declining in usage)
14.04 -> 1.54.0, gcc 4.8, clang 3.4
12.04 -> 1.48.0, gcc 4.6, clang 3.0

-- 
Regards,
Dimitri.