A couple months ago some of us got an e-mail from Dave Abrams saying that since BoostPro was going to be shutting down, there wouldn't be anyone maintaining the windows binary installer that they had been offering. Since I have been making windows binaries available on my site for the last several releases [http://boost.teeks99.com], he suggested that I take this over. I currently have a simple zip file (self extracting though) that just grabs all the 32 bit or 64 bit binaries...and they're huge, 6-8GB installed. So going forward I've built a system to make one installer for each tool/architecture: msvc-8.0-32, msvc-9.0-32, msvc-10.0-32, msvc-11.0-32, msvc-8.0-64, msvc-9.0-64, msvc-10.0-64, msvc-11.0-64. In addition to the binaries for that architecture, I would also include the boost release inside the installer. This way it is a single download/single install for everything an end-user developer would need (for each architecture). If a user wants multiple architectures, he/she can run multiple installers and they will instill on top of each other (with seperate lib directories for each set of binaries...for example: boost_1_53_0/lib_32-msvc-8.0 and boost_1_53_0/lib_64-msvc-11.0). All the scripts I use to build these (assume visual studio pro 8.0, 9.0, 10.0, and 11.0) are on my github account at: https://github.com/teeks99/boost-build If you want to see for yourself, I have the 1.53 installers on my website at: http://boost.teeks99.com/bin/boost_1_53_0-msvc-8.0-32.exe http://boost.teeks99.com/bin/boost_1_53_0-msvc-9.0-32.exe http://boost.teeks99.com/bin/boost_1_53_0-msvc-10.0-32.exe http://boost.teeks99.com/bin/boost_1_53_0-msvc-11.0-32.exe http://boost.teeks99.com/bin/boost_1_53_0-msvc-8.0-64.exe http://boost.teeks99.com/bin/boost_1_53_0-msvc-9.0-64.exe http://boost.teeks99.com/bin/boost_1_53_0-msvc-10.0-64.exe http://boost.teeks99.com/bin/boost_1_53_0-msvc-11.0-64.exe If we like this going forward, I'd be happy to upload these to sourceforge for each release, instead of having to go to my site for them. Thoughts? Tom Kent
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boost@lists.boost.org spake the secret code
Thoughts?
Since this is already Windows specific, I would suggest WiX based installers instead of inno setup as mentioned in your TODO file. WiX itself is open source and uses the Windows Installer engine built into Windows. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline The Computer Graphics Museum http://computergraphicsmuseum.org The Terminals Wiki http://terminals.classiccmp.org Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com
On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 1:02 AM, Richard
Thoughts?
Since this is already Windows specific, I would suggest WiX based installers instead of inno setup as mentioned in your TODO file. WiX itself is open source and uses the Windows Installer engine built into Windows.
Inno setup is open source (https://github.com/jrsoftware/issrc), just not with a OSI license. In fact it seems that its license isn't actually compatible with github, but I'm just realizing that now. Open source aside, I chose inno setup because its very simple, the installers I generate aren't much more than self-extracting compressed files with a one-page wizard. I haven't looked at WiX before, but I wouldn't be opposed to changing over to it. Just glancing around their tutorial it seems a lot more complicated than I need, but if I had a good, simple, example script to go off of it probably wouldn't be hard to swap out. Tom
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I haven't looked at WiX before, but I wouldn't be opposed to changing over to it. Just glancing around their tutorial it seems a lot more complicated than I need, but if I had a good, simple, example script to go off of it probably wouldn't be hard to swap out.
It's true that you probably won't need most of the features because we're essentially just dropping down a pile of files. Since I'm the one making the suggestion, I'll see if I can make a patch that uses WiX and we can compare.
From looking at the innosetup site, I got the impression that innosetup was freeware, not open source. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline The Computer Graphics Museum http://computergraphicsmuseum.org The Terminals Wiki http://terminals.classiccmp.org Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com
Richard wrote:
From looking at the innosetup site, I got the impression that innosetup was freeware, not open source.
I'm not sure why is this relevant, but https://github.com/jrsoftware/issrc
[Please do not mail me a copy of your followup] boost@lists.boost.org spake the secret code <2A7EBC16B6164630A51575BAEEFD47EB@pdimov5> thusly:
Richard wrote:
From looking at the innosetup site, I got the impression that innosetup was freeware, not open source.
I'm not sure why is this relevant, but
OK, good to know. I was looking at his site and he just doesn't say on there explicitly that it's open source, just that it's "free". On more than one occasion I've seen closed source freeware utilities change to non-freeware once everyone was using it and depended on it. I'm glad to see that isn't the case here. So, I withdraw my suggestion unless something comes up where WiX would be demonstrably better and not just different. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline The Computer Graphics Museum http://computergraphicsmuseum.org The Terminals Wiki http://terminals.classiccmp.org Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com
2013/4/16 Tom Kent
All the scripts I use to build these (assume visual studio pro 8.0, 9.0, 10.0, and 11.0) are on my github account at: https://github.com/teeks99/boost-build
If you want to see for yourself, I have the 1.53 installers on my website at: http://boost.teeks99.com/bin/boost_1_53_0-msvc-8.0-32.exe http://boost.teeks99.com/bin/boost_1_53_0-msvc-9.0-32.exe http://boost.teeks99.com/bin/boost_1_53_0-msvc-10.0-32.exe http://boost.teeks99.com/bin/boost_1_53_0-msvc-11.0-32.exe http://boost.teeks99.com/bin/boost_1_53_0-msvc-8.0-64.exe http://boost.teeks99.com/bin/boost_1_53_0-msvc-9.0-64.exe http://boost.teeks99.com/bin/boost_1_53_0-msvc-10.0-64.exe http://boost.teeks99.com/bin/boost_1_53_0-msvc-11.0-64.exe
If we like this going forward, I'd be happy to upload these to sourceforge for each release, instead of having to go to my site for them.
Thoughts? Tom Kent
That's a great work, thanks! I was just thinking about the following features: * It would be great to integrate such functionality into b2. So that any user and distro builder can make its own installers for OS by running command ./b2 installers * Some Linux distros split Boost libraries into smaller parts: libboost-dev (headers, static and debug libraries), libboost-doc, libboost-thread (runtime library), libboost-* (some other runtime libraries), boost-all. * We may provide .torrent files (or magnet links) right on the boost.org website in Download section (like some Linux distros do) if sourceforge can not store so many binary data -- Best regards, Antony Polukhin
On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 2:14 AM, Antony Polukhin
I was just thinking about the following features: * It would be great to integrate such functionality into b2. So that any user and distro builder can make its own installers for OS by running command ./b2 installers
That would be great, but this doesn't even start to open that can of worms. We'd have to build a new installer generator instead of just using one off the shelf.
* Some Linux distros split Boost libraries into smaller parts: libboost-dev (headers, static and debug libraries), libboost-doc, libboost-thread (runtime library), libboost-* (some other runtime libraries), boost-all.
If windows had any kind of package management system, I'd be all for this. As it is, I worry that just breaking them out by architecture is too many packages and will confuse people.
* We may provide .torrent files (or magnet links) right on the boost.org website in Download section (like some Linux distros do) if sourceforge can not store so many binary data
I don't think this would be necessary, the installers are only 150-200MB for each of those eight. I know that in the past the zipped binaries have been on sourceforge on a per-library basis, so the sum total of those would be much bigger than these installers (which use lzma2 compression). I'm not sure who holds the keys to the sourceforge files, maybe they could comment on this? Tom
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If windows had any kind of package management system, I'd be all for this.
By "package management system", are you referring to the part that goes out to some repository on the internet and decides what packages to download an install? Or do you mean something else?
As it is, I worry that just breaking them out by architecture is too many packages and will confuse people.
Additionally, I am not sure I see the benefit of splitting things out into so many packages. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline The Computer Graphics Museum http://computergraphicsmuseum.org The Terminals Wiki http://terminals.classiccmp.org Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com
On 16 April 2013 03:45, Tom Kent
A couple months ago some of us got an e-mail from Dave Abrams saying that since BoostPro was going to be shutting down, there wouldn't be anyone maintaining the windows binary installer that they had been offering. Since I have been making windows binaries available on my site for the last several releases [http://boost.teeks99.com], he suggested that I take this over.
Let me know if you need me to add anything to the getting started guide or the website. Although, if you have subversion access you can do it yourself. You can see the old boostpro details at: https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/changeset/82893/trunk/more/getting_started/...
participants (5)
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Antony Polukhin -
Daniel James -
legalize+jeeves＠mail.xmission.com -
Peter Dimov -
Tom Kent