[pkg-boost-devel] Fwd: Packaging of boost.compute

[Ghislain Vaillant]

Dear all,

Thanks for your quick replies,

On Mon, 2015-06-08 at 09:26 -0700, Kyle Lutz wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 7, 2015 at 9:03 AM, Steve M. Robbins <steve at sumost.ca> 
> wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > On June 3, 2015 07:36:37 AM Ghislain Vaillant wrote:
> > > Dear Boost package maintainers,
> > > 
> > > I have a package (ArrayFire) which depends on boots.compute for 
> > > its OpenCL
> > > backend. Although boost.compute has been accepted in the Boost 
> > > family, it
> > > has benn yet to be released.
> > > 
> > > I heard rumours about it coming in 1.59 but you guys might be 
> > > more aware of
> > > this than I am.
> > 
> > I don't know, myself.  Maybe Kyle can shed some light on this.
> 
> Yes, Boost.Compute was accepted back in January and should be in the
> 1.59 release.
> 

Which has no official / certain release date as of today, am I right ?


> > In terms of Boost in Debian; the current plan (Dimitri: please jump 
> > in if I
> > mis-state things) is to wait until GCC 5 is the default compiler 
> > (because it
> > will be C++11 mode by default), then package whatever is current. 
> >  Last I
> > heard the GCC transition would be in July, so it may be that the 
> > Boost
> > transition is later in the summer and we get Boost 1.59.  But 
> > there's also a
> > good chance it would be 1.58.
> > 
> > 
> > > I just wanted to know whether you guys think it is worth to
> > > spending efforts to package boost.compute separately (similar to 
> > > what is
> > > done with asio ?) or wait until the first official release with 
> > > Boost comes
> > > out.
> > > 
> > > According to the official Github repository, Boost.compute only 
> > > requires
> > > Boost 1.48 or later + OpenCL + optional backend libraries like 
> > > Eigen,
> > > VTK,...
> > > 
> > > Let me know what you guys think.
> > 
> > If you want to get ArrayFire in Debian before Compute is part of 
> > Debian's
> > boost, you could package Compute separately as you suggest.  That 
> > means
> > supporting it if other packages start using it and then deprecating 
> > it when
> > Compute comes out in Debian's Boost.  Alternatively, and especially 
> > if yours
> > is the only package needing it in the short term: you might 
> > consider not
> > packaging it, but just including it in ArrayFire sources.
> 
> If it helps, I have already set up a separate PPA for Boost.Compute:
> https://launchpad.net/~kylelutz/+archive/ubuntu/compute. Packaging is
> fairly easy as it is a header-only library.
> 

As far as I am aware, only ArrayFire requires Boost.Compute. It is
required in order to build its OpenCL backend, alongside other build
-dependencies like clBLAS and clFFT, which I am also in charge of
packaging. Meanwhile, the CPU backend of ArrayFire is already
operational.

Since it will take some time to get the other OpenCL bdeps in sid, I am
thinking about uploading a package with ArrayFire with CPU backend only
at first, and later add the OpenCL backend packages once the bdeps are
available in sid.

The question I had in mind was whether it makes sense to propose both
clBLAS and clFFT plus Compute, or leave Compute out considering that,
by the time clBLAS and clFFT are uploaded to Debian (they are ready for
submission), Boost 1.59 *may* be already out. Thoughts ?

> Let me know if I can do anything to help.
> 
> -kyle

Thanks for pointing me towards your PPA, I can now test the build of
the OpenCL backend locally. This is awesome Kyle.

Best regards to the team,
Ghislain