F37 Change: Boost 1.78 upgrade (System-Wide Change proposal)

[Ben Cotton]

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/F37Boost178


== Summary ==
This change brings Boost 1.78 to Fedora. This will mean Fedora ships
with a recent upstream Boost release.

== Owner ==

* Name: [[User:trodgers| Thomas Rodgers]]
* Email: trodgers(a)redhat.com


== Detailed Description ==

The aim is to synchronize Fedora with the most recent Boost release.
Because ABI stability is absent from Boost, this entails rebuilding of
all dependent packages. This also entails the change owner assisting
maintainers of client packages in decoding cryptic boost-ese seen in
output from g++.

The equivalent changes for previous releases were
[[Changes/F35Boost176]], [[Changes/F34Boost175]],
[[Changes/F33Boost173]], [[Changes/F30Boost169|Fedora 30 Change]],
[[Changes/F29Boost167|Fedora 29 Change]], [[Changes/F28Boost166|Fedora
28 Change]], [[Changes/F27Boost164|Fedora 27 Change]],
[[Changes/F26Boost163|Fedora 26 Change]], [[Changes/F25Boost161|Fedora
25 Change]], [[Changes/F24Boost160|Fedora 24 Change]],
[[Changes/F23Boost159|Fedora 23 Change]] and
[[Changes/F22Boost158|Fedora 22 Change]].

== Benefit to Fedora ==

Fedora 37 includes Boost 1.78.

Fedora will stay relevant, as far as Boost clients are concerned.

Boost 1.78 does not bring any new components, but includes two new
header-only libraries from Boost 1.77 -
* Describe: A C++14 reflection library. Provides macros for describing
enumerators and struct/class members, and primitives for querying this
information.
* Lambda2: A C++14, dependency-free, single header lambda library.
Allows simple function objects to be constructed via expressions such
as _1 + 5, _1 % 2 == 0, _1 > _2, or _1 == ' ' || _1 == '\t'.

Boost 1.78 also includes many fixes and enhancements to existing components.

== Scope ==
* Proposal owners:
** Build will be done with Boost.Build v2 (which is the
upstream-sanctioned way of building Boost)
** Request a "f37-boost"
[https://docs.pagure.org/releng/sop_adding_side_build_targets.html
build system tag]
([http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2011-November/159908.html
discussion]):

** Build boost into that tag (take a look at the
[http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=606493 build
#606493] for inspiration)
** Post a request for rebuilds to fedora-devel
** Work on rebuilding dependent packages in the tag.
** When most is done, re-tag all the packages to rawhide
** Watch fedora-devel and assist in rebuilding broken Boost clients
(by fixing the client, or Boost).

* Other developers:
** Those who depend on Boost DSOs will have to rebuild their packages.
Feature owners will alleviate some of this work as indicated above,
and will assist those whose packages fail to build in debugging them.


* Release engineering: TODO <!-- [https://pagure.io/releng/issue/9421
#9421] --> (a check of an impact with Release Engineering is needed)

* Policies and guidelines:
** Apart from scope, this is business as usual, so no new policies, no
new guidelines.

* Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)


== Upgrade/compatibility impact ==
* No manual configuration or data migration needed.
* Some impact on other packages needing code changes to rebuild.
Historically this hasn't been too much of a problem and could always
be resolved before deadline.

== How To Test ==
* No special hardware is needed.
* Integration testing simply consists of installing Boost packages
(`dnf install boost`) on Fedora and checking that it does not break
other packages (see below for a way to obtain a list of boost
clients).


== User Experience ==
* Expected to remain largely the same.
* Developers building third-party software on Fedora may need to
rebuild against the new Boost packages, and may need to adjust their
code if the new Boost release is not source-compatible.

== Dependencies ==
Packages that must be rebuilt:
<code>$ dnf repoquery -s --releasever=rawhide --whatrequires
libboost\* --disablerepo=* --enablerepo=fedora | sort -u</code>

All clients:
<code>$ dnf repoquery --releasever=rawhide --archlist=src
--whatrequires boost-devel --disablerepo='*'
--enablerepo=fedora-source</code>

== Contingency Plan ==

* Contingency mechanism: Worst case scenario is to abandon the update
and simply ship F37 with Boost 1.76, which is already in rawhide.
* Blocks release? No
* Blocks product? None

== Documentation ==
* https://www.boost.org/users/history/version_1_78_0.html (released on
8th December 2021)
* https://www.boost.org/users/history/version_1_77_0.html (released on
11 August 2021)
* https://www.boost.org/development/index.html

== Release Notes ==


-- 
Ben Cotton
He / Him / His
Fedora Program Manager
Red Hat
TZ=America/Indiana/Indianapolis