[pkg-boost-devel] Bug#483977: Bug#483977: libboost1.35-dev: dependency problem with asio

[Steve M. Robbins]

Hello folks,

I didn't know that asio had an independent existance on sourceforge.

I'm not sure there's a bug here, but I'd like the asio maintainer to
comment.  Now that asio is released with Boost, will further
maintenance be done within boost or on the asio.sourceforge.net site?
If the former, one could probably retire the asio package from Debian.
If the latter, the question becomes how to use libasio-dev together
with Boost's -dev package that also includes asio.  Building with two
asio libraries together seems fraught with danger, IMHO.


On Sun, Jun 01, 2008 at 05:54:54PM +0200, Juergen Rinas wrote:
> Package: libboost1.35-dev
> Version: 1.35.0-5
> Severity: normal
> 
> 
> The boost web site states, that asio is now part of the boost collection:
> 
> http://www.boost.org/
>    News
>       Version 1.35.0 New Libraries: Asio
>       ... stuff deleted ...
>       March 29th, 2008 12:00 GMT
> 
> 
> So I'm looking forward to use asio 1.0.x with boost 1.35.x in my programs,
> bit this will not work due to a dependency program....

My take is that if you want to use Boost 1.35, then use the asio that
ships with it.  In short: drop the libasio-dev dependency and just use
libboost1.35-dev.  (The paranoid would include a build-conflict with
libasio-dev.)


> optional    1.0.0-1            (currently 01.Jun.2008 in unstable)
>   Depends: libboost-dev
> 
> libboost1.35-dev   1.35.0-5    (currently 01.Jun.2008 in unstable)
>   Conflicts: libboost-dev
> 
> ... should libboost1.35-dev provide libboost-dev ?

No.  We don't want to claim they are interchangeable because Boost
doesn't guarantee any backwards compatibility.  Therefore the Boost
packaging team decided to include the Boost version in all the package
names.  In this manner, a package may choose precisely the Boost
version to build with and not have a nasty FTBFS surprise when Boost
(libboost-dev) is upgraded.

This started with 1.35.0; the unversioned libboost-dev (Boost 1.34.1)
will vanish when it is no longer used as a build-dep.  Hopefully this
will happen around the time 1.36 hits the archive so that we don't
have to maintain more than 2 Boost versions.  :-)


> ... or should libasio-dev depend on  libboost-dev | libboost1.35-dev  ?
>     ... so please reassign this report..

I suspect that would also be a mistake.  If you have both libasio-dev
and libboost1.35-dev installed, you have two independent copies of
asio.  Unless one is *extremely* vigilant about include directories,
you'd end up mixing the two.


Regards,
-Steve
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