Update brew instructions to build Boost from HEAD #3936

cbeams commented at 12:02 PM on March 22, 2014: contributor

Previously, when trying to build master or v0.9.0, compilation on OS X would fail. This commit resolves these errors by building Boost from source. Building from HEAD removes the guarantee of a repeatable build, but this appears to be a necessity until the next version of Boost is released.

At the time of this writing, the current version of Boost is 1.55.0. Presumably, the next release will include the changes now on HEAD, and once that new version has been made available in Homebrew, this commit should be reverted.

Update brew instructions to build Boost from HEAD

Previously, when trying to build master or v0.9.0, compilation on OS X
would fail [1]. This commit resolves these errors by building Boost from
source. Building from HEAD removes the guarantee of a repeatable build,
but this appears to be a necessity until the next version of Boost is
released.

At the time of this writing, the current version of Boost is 1.55.0 [2].
Presumably, the next release will include the changes now on HEAD, and
once that new version has been made available in Homebrew [3], this
commit should be reverted.

[1]: https://gist.github.com/9704573
[2]: http://www.boost.org/users/history
[3]: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/commits/master/Library/Formula/boost.rb

8d0e94fa29

cbeams commented at 12:05 PM on March 22, 2014: contributor

Note that I assume build instructions for other platforms (doc/build-unix.md, doc/build-msw.md) should be updated similarly, but I have not updated these files because I have not tested this change anywhere other than OS X.

laanwj commented at 12:24 PM on March 22, 2014: member

Are you sure that there isn't another workaround than building boost from head?

I know for certain that this is not needed for unix and windows, the pulltester even uses some ancient version of boost...

BitcoinPullTester commented at 12:26 PM on March 22, 2014: none

Automatic sanity-testing: PASSED, see http://jenkins.bluematt.me/pull-tester/8d0e94fa299d101f4209e6f2880ebcab39acafdc for binaries and test log. This test script verifies pulls every time they are updated. It, however, dies sometimes and fails to test properly. If you are waiting on a test, please check timestamps to verify that the test.log is moving at http://jenkins.bluematt.me/pull-tester/current/ Contact BlueMatt on freenode if something looks broken.

fanquake commented at 1:42 PM on March 22, 2014: member

An alternate workaround could be using a version of Boost before 1.55.0

On Saturday, March 22, 2014, BitcoinPullTester notifications@github.com wrote:

Automatic sanity-testing: PASSED, see http://jenkins.bluematt.me/pull-tester/8d0e94fa299d101f4209e6f2880ebcab39acafdcfor binaries and test log. This test script verifies pulls every time they are updated. It, however, dies sometimes and fails to test properly. If you are waiting on a test, please check timestamps to verify that the test.log is moving at http://jenkins.bluematt.me/pull-tester/current/ Contact BlueMatt on freenode if something looks broken.

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/3936#issuecomment-38350180 .

cbeams commented at 2:56 PM on March 22, 2014: contributor

I'm retracting this pull request by closing it. As it turns out, this entire episode was a case of particularly bad timing on my part.

I followed the brew install instructions in doc/build-osx.md when the current version of the boost formula in Homebrew was 1.55.0.

At this point, make was failing as described above. I reached out to #bitcoin-dev and got advice to build Boost from source, which I did, and was subsequently able to successfully build. It's at this point that I put together this pull request.

What I didn't realize is that in the meantime—literally between the time that ran the first failing make and the time I issued this pull request—the Homebrew team had merged a new forumla for Boost (1.55.0_1) that fixes the compilation errors I was experiencing (!). (Note that while commit for that version bump was merged 4 days ago, the actual 1.55.0_1 artifact showed up in Homebrew's distribution directory only ~9 hours ago).

For reference, the Homebrew pull request that bumps Boost to 1.55.0_1 is Homebrew/homebrew#27660. Specifically, see comment https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/pull/27660#issuecomment-37923669, which further links to the underlying issue that caused this breakage in the first place.

So, as it turns out, my compiling from HEAD worked, but only because it was getting me the same fixed that was shipped in 1.55.0_1.

Thanks @laanwj for asking me to take a second look at this.

cbeams closed this on Mar 22, 2014

cbeams deleted the branch on Mar 22, 2014

DrahtBot locked this on Sep 8, 2021