Re: [Boost-users] What's happened to Ryppl?

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] What's happened to Ryppl?
From: Dave Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-01-14 13:28:26

At Tue, 11 Jan 2011 10:36:56 +0000,
Robert Jones wrote:
> What's happened to Ryppl?

Fair enough; now that I'm digging myself out of the new years'
pile-up, it's time for a status update.  [Replies will go to the
ryppl-dev list by default; see
http://groups.google.com/group/ryppl-dev/subscribe for information on
posting]

---------

There are basically three parallel efforts in Ryppl:

I. Modularize boost

* Eric Niebler produced a script to shuffle Boost into separate Git
  repositories.  He has been maintaining that script to keep up with
  minor changes in the Boost SVN, but doesn't have time at the moment
  to do much more.  Fortunately, I don't think there's much more to be
  done on that.

* John Wiegley has developed a comprehensive strategy for rewriting
  SVN history to preserve as much information as possible about the
  evolution of everything, and he's working on implementing that.  I
  expect results soon.

II. CMake-ify the modularized Boost

* A bunch of work has been done on this, but we never got to the point
  that *everything* built, installed, and passed the tests.

* Denis Arnaud has been maintaining a (non-modularized) Boost-CMake
  distribution; see
  https://groups.google.com/group/ryppl-dev/msg/b619c95964b0e003?hl=en
  and others in that thread for details.

These two efforts can be merged; I'm sure of it.

III. Dependency management

* I have been working on libsat-solver.  Sat-solver is the underlying
  technology of the zypp installer used by OpenSuse, and it contains
  all the important bits needed by any installation and
  dependency-management system and has the right licensing.  It's a
  CMake-based project.

* These are the jobs:

 1. Porting to Mac.  I a good chunk of this job
    (http://gitorious.org/opensuse/sat-solver/merge_requests/2 ---
    including submitting some CMake patches upstream!) but there's
    still more to do.  Since sat-solver includes all kinds of ruby
    bindings and whatnot that we don't really need for this project,
    these parts probably need to be ported in order for the changes
    to be accepted upstream.

 2. Replace the example program's use of RPM by Git.

 3. Port to Windows.  Mateusz Loskot made a bunch of progress on this
 (http://groups.google.com/group/ryppl-dev/browse_thread/thread/7292998aadb04b91)
 but it's not yet complete.

-------------

Our priorities, in descending order, are:

1. Set up buildbots for modularized boost so we can test work on the
   CMake-ification.  This step will also serve as a proof-of-concept
   for modularized Boost's testing infrastructure

2. Complete the CMake-ification

3. History-preserving modularization: it's an estimate of course, but
   I expect John to have handled that within a few weeks.

4. Do the dependency management part.

As usual, we welcome your assistance, participation, and interest!  If
there's any part of this that you'd like to work on, please speak up.

Regards,

-- 
Dave Abrahams
BoostPro Computing
http://www.boostpro.com