Comment 1 for bug 582420

For good or ill MPI is the defacto standard solution for handling parallel computations in C, C++ and Fortran. For good or ill Boost is the de facto standard library of extensions to C++. Doing any parallleism using C++ will therefore involve Boost.MPI -- including after the C++0x standard comes out and everyone can use futures and asynchronous function call. Ubuntu has ejected the libboost-mpi-dev package and all related Boost.MPI packages. There is therfore now no way of installing Boost.MPI on Ubuntu via packages. Scott Kitterman wrote in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/boost-defaults/+bug/531973, point 15 that there is an objective rationale to this. Debian however are not following this rationale, they retain the Boost.MPI packages, so either have found a way of solving the issue Scott outlines or have chosen not to be bound by that issue.

Unless Ubuntu provides some way of installing Boost.MPI from packages then everyone who uses C++ and Boost.MPI will have to cease using Ubuntu and switch to Debian, or one of the RPM-based distributions.