Re: [Boost-users] [boost] Making the Windows binaries 'official'

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] [boost] Making the Windows binaries 'official'
From: Tom Kent (lists_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-08-15 08:28:20

On Fri, Aug 14, 2015 at 8:34 PM, Glen Fernandes <glen.fernandes_at_[hidden]>
wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 14, 2015 at 9:03 PM, Tom Kent wrote:
> > Is this something the community would be in favor of? I know that many of
> > the people on these lists don't use windows and if they do are generally
> > capable of building the windows binaries themselves, however there is a
> > large group out there that prefers to just get the installer for them
> (like
> > they do for other projects like Qt, wxWidgets, etc).
> >
> > Thoughts?
>
> While I have not been a MSVC user for a while now: I think it's a good
> thing for our VC users that binaries are available to them.
>
> Is (1) necessary? I was under the impression binaries becoming
> available a few days after a source release is not uncommon.
>

This is basically how it is now....if people don't think it is necessary we
can stick with this. However, I think it would be more professional if we
change, hence my e-mail to the list.

> SourceForge raises the usual concern: Can you trust a Windows
> executable or DLL that you get from sourceforge.net anymore?
>

The .7z file and installers are SHA-256 hashed, and the list of hashes is
signed with my GPG key. That said, I think we need to start planning an
alternative to sourceforge for releases. It is not clear to me that it will
still be around in a few years. That's a whole different thread though.

>
> Also, how do you cater to users who want variants that you're not
> providing? i.e. Already you probably have Debug/Release *
> 32-bit/64-bit * MT/MD/MTd/MDd * LIB/DLL (per 6 compiler versions).
> What happens if someone wants /Gz or /Gv instead of /Gd etc.
>

I provide whatever bjam specifies with --build-type=complete. The bigger
question is external libraries. I link with zlib, and bzip2 but not MPI for
instance. I have had users ask for different version numbers of those
libraries, but my answer is then that you're on your own for building
anything else. These kind of questions are only relevant to far less than
1% of the people who download the binaries.

Tom