Immediately after upgrading from Ubuntu 22.04 to Ubuntu 24.04 I found I 
could not build, recent, v3.7 or v3.8 official release sources due 
boost_thread libraries not being found when linking.

Turns out the boost related libraries were upgraded to newer versions, 
but mostly no symbolic links to the generic library names were created 
during the upgrade. In other words, my machine's 
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu post upgrade directory looks like:

-rw-r--r-- 1 ... libboost_thread.so.1.83.0
-rw-r--r-- 1 ... libboost_regex.so.1.83.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 ... libboost_regex.so -> libboost_regex.so.1.83.0
-rw-r--r-- 1 ... libboost_regex.a
-rw-r--r-- 1 ... libboost_locale.so.1.83.0
-rw-r--r-- 1 ... libboost_iostreams.so.1.83.0
-rw-r--r-- 1 ... libboost_filesystem.so.1.83.0

Likely, if the boost libraries are explicitly installed / re-installed, 
or some tool with a dependency on one or more boost library is installed 
(povray), the necessary symbolic links will be created.

What I did was to create a local directory called

/home/pokorny/boost_libs/v1_83_0

into which I copied all the libboost*.so.1.83.0 libraries. I then 
created two(*) symbolic links in that directory with:

ln -s libboost_thread.so.1.83.0 libboost_thread.so.

and

ln -s libboost_regex.so.1.83.0 libboost_regex.so

The configure script was then run with the flag:

--with-boost-libdir=/home/pokorny/boost_libs/v1_83_0


(*) - The yuqk fork uses the C++ regex capability introduced with C++11.

Bill P.


Additional information
----------------------

For a significant time during v3.8 development the dependencies on boost 
libraries was eliminated. Only header dependencies remained - which 
effectively eliminated the longstanding boost library linking problems.

The yuqk fork, the v4.0 master branch and any other forks branching off 
commits during that time do not have the 'unable to link' boost_thread 
v3.8 beta 2 issue above.

In mid 2021 significant parts of the v3.8 release code was reverted to 
earlier states. This included a reversion to using the boost_thread 
library - and this is why v3.8 beta 2 user builds might hit boost_thread 
linking issues.

Official packages
-----------------

Ubuntu 24.04 (Debian) continues to offer official povray install 
packages for v3.7 - though I didn't install any on my machine for 
development reasons. They are:

fonts-povray - Persistence of vision raytracer (3D renderer) fonts

povray - Persistence of vision raytracer (3D renderer)

povray-doc - Persistence of vision raytracer (3D renderer) documentation

povray-examples - Persistence of vision raytracer (3D renderer) sample files

povray-includes - Persistence of vision raytracer (3D renderer) include 
files

Post a reply to this message

So once again the question I asked in June, is there anybody maintaining the
official povray branch?

This is only getting worse, and you can't expect every user to hack the sources,
or their environment, to run povray.

Cheers
Ton.

Post a reply to this message

On 9/8/24 19:35, Ton wrote:
> So once again the question I asked in June, is there anybody maintaining the
> official povray branch?

My answer too remains the same. No. :-)

> 
> This is only getting worse, and you can't expect every user to hack the sources,
> or their environment, to run povray.
> 
> Cheers
> Ton.

I agree.

Most users should install the POV-Ray linux distribution packages. 
Effectively, the linux distribution folks are acting as the only 
official support at present for POV-Ray.

"This," I see more broadly than POV-Ray development support. The g++13 
compiler issue(s) and my Ubuntu 24.04 boost library upgrade situation 
are general development environment issues which affect POV-Ray (and 
other C++ projects), from source, builds.

With both my Ubuntu 22.04 upgrade two years ago (which actually failed) 
and the 24.04 upgrade last weekend, the degradation seems to be with 
development environments being less sorted on major updates / steps. 
Code development environments are community efforts and having official, 
POV-Ray specific, development would make POV-Ray a better development 
community member.

I understand what I've weitten is not of much practical help for our 
POV-Ray development situation...

Lastly, thank you for the OpenEXR 3 updates you and Christoph worked out 
more than three years ago! I just this past week adapted them to my yuqk 
fork given Ubuntu 24.04 moved to OpenEXR 3.1.5 and Imath 3.1.9.

Bill P.

Post a reply to this message

On 08.09.2024 12:10, William F Pokorny wrote:
> Immediately after upgrading from Ubuntu 22.04 to Ubuntu 24.04 I found I 
> could not build, recent, v3.7 or v3.8 official release sources due 
> boost_thread libraries not being found when linking.

This is hardly surprising given the thread library from boost was (in a 
slightly modified form) promoted to the standard ISO C++ library. You 
should try to explicitly specify the C++ version (C++03) and see if 
Boost will build the thread library if that is specified.

Thorsten

Post a reply to this message

On 9/9/24 06:54, Thorsten wrote:
> On 08.09.2024 12:10, William F Pokorny wrote:
>> Immediately after upgrading from Ubuntu 22.04 to Ubuntu 24.04 I found 
>> I could not build, recent, v3.7 or v3.8 official release sources due 
>> boost_thread libraries not being found when linking.
> 
> This is hardly surprising given the thread library from boost was (in a 
> slightly modified form) promoted to the standard ISO C++ library. You 
> should try to explicitly specify the C++ version (C++03) and see if 
> Boost will build the thread library if that is specified.
> 
> Thorsten
> 

The minimum, officially supported, compiler version for v3.8 and v3.8 
based forks is c++11.

I've been using c++17 for all POV-Ray compiles aimed at real use for 
years with the thought of bumping the minimum compiler level to c++17 
for yuqk - though probably a move to c++20 would now be the better choice.

Your post gives me a place to clarify my earlier regex footnote. The 
yuqk fork is using the c++'s std::regex capability - not boost's. I 
added the symbolic link for the boost regex library to match what the 
Ubuntu upgrade did in the official library location. I expect for 
POV-Ray it doesn't matter.

Aside: I'd like to rid the yuqk source of all remaining boost 
dependencies. I don't believe any are present day necessities. Someday...

Bill P.

Post a reply to this message

On 09.09.2024 14:26, William F Pokorny wrote:
> Aside: I'd like to rid the yuqk source of all remaining boost 
> dependencies. I don't believe any are present day necessities. Someday...

Indeed, there should be nothing left that needs boost...

Thorsten

Post a reply to this message

> I understand what I've weitten is not of much practical help for our
> POV-Ray development situation...

So the official Povray has started dying a slow death. I'll might yuqk a try,
although you say that it is moving away from Povray and not render existing
Povray scenes without modifications.

> Lastly, thank you for the OpenEXR 3 updates you and Christoph worked out
> more than three years ago! I just this past week adapted them to my yuqk
> fork given Ubuntu 24.04 moved to OpenEXR 3.1.5 and Imath 3.1.9.

No problem. Cristoph asked whether somebody could assist him with this, I
volunteered and succeeded.

Cheers
Ton.

Post a reply to this message