Making the Windows binaries 'official'
<history> After the boostpro.com organization dissolved, there was never an official place to go to get pre-built binaries for the releases. Some random components were made available on the sourceforge download page and I had been hosting them on my own website (http://boost.teeks99.com) since I started building them around the release of 1.37. A couple years ago, before the release of 1.54, I asked the community if they would like my builds to be hosted on the sourceforge site, and the answer was positive: http://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2013/04/202460.php Since the 1.54 release, I've generally been uploading the windows binaries based on the RCs and enabling the downloads just a few minutes after the release notice goes out. </history> I would now like to propose that we make these libraries an official part of each Boost release. I don't think this entails much, just the following: 1) Have the release team coordinate with me to ensure that the binaries are ready before announcing the release. 2) Include a link to them in the release announcement. 3) Link to them from the website. It would also be good to get others who can run the scripts to perform the build, if I am someday unable to do this. The biggest hurdle here is having a (virtual) machine with all six versions of visual studio on it. 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? Tom Kent
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. SourceForge raises the usual concern: Can you trust a Windows executable or DLL that you get from sourceforge.net anymore? 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. Glen
On Fri, Aug 14, 2015 at 8:34 PM, Glen Fernandes
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
participants (2)
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Glen Fernandes -
Tom Kent