[libcamera-devel] Optional dependency seems to be required

[Laurent Pinchart]

Hi Sebastian,

On Fri, Oct 23, 2020 at 06:55:37AM +0200, Sebastian Fricke wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> during the installation process of libcamera, I followed the
> instructions on: http://libcamera.org/getting-started.html .
> I noticed, I was required to install the boost library `libboost-dev`,
> while the instruction flags it as optional.
> 
> My system is:
> ```
> basti at basti:~$ uname -a
> Linux basti 5.8.0-rc6 #1 SMP Wed Jul 22 10:22:11 CEST 2020 x86_64 GNU/Linux
> ```
> 
> and I am running on this distro:
> 
> ```
> basti at basti:~$ lsb_release -d
> Description:    Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
> ```
> 
> Does anyone else encounter this problem? Was a setting incorrect on my
> side? Should I open a patch for it?

The dependency is required to build support for Raspberry Pi. It is
documented as optional, as Raspberry Pi support itself is optional. You
can disable it with the 'meson configure' command, run in the build
directory. Without arguments, it will print all the configuration
options. You can then disable the Raspberry Pi pipeline handler with

meson configure -Dpipelines="ipu3,rkisp1,simple,uvcvideo,vimc"

(On a side note, it would be nice if meson had a syntax to add or remove
values incrementally from an option - I've just reported it as
https://github.com/mesonbuild/meson/issues/7886.)

We're aware that this isn't very user-friendly, improving the user
experience is on our todo list. There's a mail thread in the mailing
list archives titled "[RFC PATCH] ipa: rpi: Make boost optional" where
this very issue is discussed.

> Thanks in advance.
> (And thanks for the cool project)

Thank you for your interest in libcamera :-) Please let us know if you
run into more issues, or have additional feedback.

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart