Re: [boost] python::numpy not built on windows binary installers

On Tue, Jul 3, 2018 at 5:15 PM, Tom Kent wrote:

On Mon, Jun 25, 2018 at 5:04 PM, Tom Kent wrote:

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On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 3:00 PM, Nicholas Devenish via Boost < boost@lists.boost.org> wrote:

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Hi All,

I just downloaded the windows boost binaries from https://dl.bintray.com/boostorg/release/1.67.0/binaries/, linked from the boost downloads page. They are missing the boost_numpy library. This (silently) doesn't build if the python installation that boost finds is missing numpy.

This is listed as "Third Party" so apologies if this is the wrong place to report it - but it's not clear from the page who makes them. I also couldn't find any mention of this, so don't know if it's a deliberate exclusion.

Nick

I'll see if I can get numpy into the python release that is used to build the windows binaries for the next release. In the meantime, your best bet is to build from source on a machine with numpy correctly setup.

Hmm, this isn't going smoothly. My plan was to move to Python 3.7 and include numpy with the package I'm supporting. However, when I try to build this with MSVC < 14.0 it fails, as inittypes.h wasn't part of visual studio before then. I don't want to spend time improving support for 2.7 (by adding numpy), since it is end-of-life and will be gone in a year and a half [1].

If I get time (and this is a *huge* if, we're in the process of adopting a boy), I'm going to try to make windows builds so that the user-config.jam file changes for each build. For 8.0 <= MSVC <=12.0, I'll set it to build against the old 2.7 version, for MSVC >= 14.0 I'll have it build against 3.7 with numpy. Then the first build after Jan 1, 2020, I'll just take the python support out of MSVC < 14.0 completely.

I'm debating removing it completely from all installers. If you are building against python, you really should build your own copy of boost::python. There are so many version dependencies that can get out of whack (e.g. using python 3.5 with a boost that is build against 3.7 might give you really weird/silent link failures) that is a dangerous thing to build in.

I've also been trying to get numpy into the windows (and linux) regression runners, but am hitting the same issue. Hopefully I'll find time to clear that up too.

Tom

[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/750846/

I've added Python 3.7 + numpy to the msvc-14.0 and msvc-14.1 builds for the upcoming beta. msvc < 14.0 is still 2.7 without numpy. If anyone could check them out and verify that they are working, that would be much appreciated: http://boost.teeks99.com/bin/1.68.0_b1/ Thanks, Tom