Reasonable boost baseline?

[Rene Engelhard]

Hi,

On Sat, Mar 21, 2020 at 12:28:18PM +0100, Stephan Bergmann wrote:
> <https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/90770> "Fix build with boost <
> 1.68" is a request to make libreoffice-6-4 :wbuild with older Boost, so there

Thanks for pointing out that change, I built with boost1.71 (which is
available on Debian unstable and testing, but not default, see below)
for now, but that won't help for builds for older distros (aka stable),
unless I used internal boost there :/
That 

> is apparently demand for that (though the Gerrit change lacks further
> information what that demand looks like exactly, i.e., what version of
> Boost, and why people would be stuck with that version).

I'd guess 1.67 given that it is from Rico and Ubuntu has:

>From https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=libboost-dev:

xenial (16.04LTS) (libdevel): Boost C++ Libraries development files
(default version)
1.58.0.1ubuntu1: amd64 arm64 armhf i386 powerpc ppc64el s390x
bionic (18.04LTS) (libdevel): Boost C++ Libraries development files
(default version)
1.65.1.0ubuntu1: amd64 arm64 armhf i386 ppc64el s390x
disco (19.04) (libdevel): Boost C++ Libraries development files (default
version)
1.67.0.1: amd64 arm64 armhf i386 ppc64el s390x
eoan (19.10) (libdevel): Boost C++ Libraries development files (default
version)
1.67.0.2: amd64 arm64 armhf i386 ppc64el s390x
focal (libdevel): Boost C++ Libraries development files (default
version)
1.71.0.0ubuntu1: amd64 arm64 armhf i386 ppc64el s390x

For Debian:

libboost-dev | 1.67.0.1      | stable       | amd64, arm64, armel,
armhf, i386, mips, mips64el, mipsel, ppc64el, s390x
libboost-dev | 1.67.0.2+b1   | testing      | amd64, arm64, armel,
armhf, i386, mips64el, mipsel, ppc64el, s390x
libboost-dev | 1.67.0.2+b1   | unstable     | amd64, arm64, armel,
armhf, i386, mips64el, mipsel, ppc64el, s390x
libboost-dev | 1.71.0.2      | experimental | amd64, arm64, armel,
armhf, i386, mips64el, mipsel, ppc64el, s390x

So yes, people are "stuck" with 1.67 on older distros and even Debian
unstable has only 1.67 (which is a problem, yes.)

> I would like to start a discussion about the actual Boost baselines we need
> to support on libreoffice-6-3, -6-4, and master.  Lacking any communicated
> reason why a branch should support a specific lower baseline, I would
> suggest we stick to the version of our bundled external/boost on a branch as
> the baseline for that branch (and update the configure.ac AX_BOOST_BASE
> check accordingly).

>From my personal POV anything >= 1.67 is fine.

Regards,

Rene