On Fri, Sep 12, 2025 at 11:20 AM Volker Braun <
vbrau...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > BTW, Conda is already the recommended approach for compiling from source.
>
> Is it? I mean thats great but I'm not aware of it
>
> Our documentation
https://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/installation/source.html curiously only explains how to NOT use conda in case you happen to be in an activated conda environment.
>
> I'm not aware of any documentation with a conda one-liner that creates an environment with the base dependencies,
Are we talking about building sagelib from source, or building
sage-distro from source?
There is no supported way to build a mix of conda and non-conda
sage-disto packages,
nor there should be, IMHO.
In more detail, see
https://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/installation/conda.html
specifically
https://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/installation/conda.html#using-conda-to-provide-all-dependencies-for-the-sage-library
explains how to set things up in Conda to work on sagelib - with all
deps provided by conda.
we don't and really cannot support a mix with the standard install
(./boostrap+./configure+make) pulling some deps from Conda and some
from elsewhere. Conda setup is for sagelib only; updating a
(sage-distro) dependency in this context means updating the
corresponding Conda package.
Dima
> but we do have separate one-liners for five different linux distributions and macOS homebrew
>
> I'm seeing a lot of build failues when testing tickets, but never have I seen one that would helpfully mention which conda package to install.
>
> On Friday, September 12, 2025 at 2:16:45 AM UTC+2
Tobia...@gmx.de wrote:
>>
>> It's important to have the overall situation for this in mind:
>> - Dima is the main maintainer nowadays for updating packages in sage-the-distro. One should perhaps say the only maintainer. In fact, he has trouble to even find reviewers for package update PRs.
>> - The maintenance burden is way to high: according to
https://repology.org/repository/sagemath_develop , 200, or 60%, of the packages in sage-the-distro are outdated.
>>
>> So if Dima thinks it's too much overhead to update a certain dependency (in the case of boost, we are carrying a 9 year old version), then we should follow that judgment - even if it means the install experience for a certain group of people might be slightly worse. The alternative is a completely unusable and unmaintained sage-the-distro in the future. Unless of course there are now more people that view this as a call to contribute to the updates.
>>
>> BTW, Conda is already the recommended approach for compiling from source.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Friday, September 12, 2025 at 6:48:47 AM UTC+8 Volker Braun wrote:
>>>
>>> This is to gather some feedback about future requirements for installing Sage.
https://github.com/sagemath/sage/pull/40689 wants to make installing boost the user's responsibility to install, which is easy enough on linux (unless you are not root) and what I would have thought way past the frustration tolerance of a casual user on macOS if they don't already use some third-party package manager.
>>>
>>> In that case (plain macOS) you basically have to follow the instructions on
https://www.boost.org/doc/user-guide/getting-started.html#_download_boost to compile & install boost by hand.
>>>
>>> I personally don't use macOS unless I absolutely have to, so I don't really have any skin in the game here. So if you use a mac and have some thoughts about installing boost, this is your thread ;)
>>>
>>> PS: On a meta-level there are definitely advantages to let somebody else provide the basic environment. But imho we should then start with a specific and reproducable basic environment that you can easily install (and fwiw conda is the only contender here that does not require root and is cross-platform). And not start by making that switch implicitly as a side effect of "move boost to prereqs, and by the way here are three different ways to get boost"
>
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