[HDFS-15385] Upgrade boost library to 1.72

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Critical
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 3.4.0
• Component/s: build, libhdfs++
• Hadoop Flags: Reviewed
• Release Note: Boost 1.72 is required when building native code.
• Assignee: Gautham Banasandra
• Reporter: Gautham Banasandra
• Created: 03/Jun/20 16:25
• Updated: 09/Aug/20 14:58
• Resolved: 15/Jul/20 04:43

Description

The version of the boost library that's currently being used in HDFS is 1.10.2. It is VERY old. It's from a time when it perhaps the name "boost" wasn't even conceived. Going by the name of the library, it was probably just called as "asio".

From https://www.boost.org/users/history/ website, the earliest available version,1.10.3 is more than 2 decades old as it was released in 1999 -

This really poses a big hurdle when it comes to upgrading to newer compiler versions as, some the programming constructs that are used in asio-1.10.2 which were mere warnings back then, get flagged as outright errors with modern compilers. (I tried to compile Hadoop with Visual Studio 2019 and saw plenty of such errors).

In the interest of keeping the Hadoop project modern and live, I would like to propose the idea of upgrading the boost library with the latest.

Issue Links

• causes: HADOOP-17153 Add boost installation steps to build instruction on CentOS 8
• is a child of: HADOOP-17193 Compile Hadoop on Windows natively
• links to: GitHub Pull Request #2051