Update OpenCV version for 16.04

[combieone]

The Ubuntu 16.04 alpha still only contains OpenCV 2.4. It would be really good to update to OpenCV 3.1 for a distribution to be released in 2016, as the 2.4 series is getting quite old.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

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[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Arto Bendiken (artob)]

Given that 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) is now feature-frozen, it seems unlikely this is going to happen for the present LTS release.

This is unfortunate, because the pressing problem with retaining the ancient OpenCV 2.4 in Xenial is that it doesn't include Python 3 bindings. The python-opencv package requires Python 2.7, which is not a good state of affairs going forward into a new LTS:

http://packages.ubuntu.com/xenial/python-opencv

Note also the related bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/opencv/+bug/1516985 for upgrading to OpenCV 3.x.

[Arto Bendiken (artob)]

FYI, I opened bug #1556156 just now for the specific issue of the currently-shipped OpenCV version lacking Python 3 support altogether. As that issue is contingent on first shipping OpenCV 3.0, and the implications of failing to do so for the next LTS are not limited to merely the question of Python support, I am copying the full ticket description here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/debian/+source/opencv/+bug/1556156

Because the packaged OpenCV remains at the obsolete 2.4 release even
still in 16.04 (Xenial Xerus), which is already in feature freeze, it is
looking as though 2018 is the earliest that an Ubuntu LTS release will
package OpenCV 3.x, which at that point will be already some 4 years
old. (And the currently-shipped OpenCV 2.x branch will be going on 9
years.) See bugs #1516985 and #1540168.

This is not a great state of affairs for such an important package, but
what exacerbates the situation is that OpenCV in Ubuntu (and in Debian)
currently altogether lacks Python 3 support. Namely, the current OpenCV
2.4 packages support only Python 2.7, since Python 3 support was
introduced only in OpenCV 3.0 [1], which was only packaged in Debian
(experimental) last December.

This has already been a pain point for OpenCV users (and some packages
requiring OpenCV) and is likely to become a burning problem over the
course of this LTS release's lifecycle. The robotics community (e.g. ROS
users), in particular, rely on Ubuntu LTS as a platform, and are going
to be rather rudely surprised both by Xenial's old OpenCV release and
still more by its lack of Python 3 support.

The relevant upstream Debian bugs are 799262 [2] and 792677 [3]. As
mentioned, OpenCV 3.0 has already been packaged in Debian (packages
libopencv-*3.0) and could be imported to Ubuntu. The Python bindings
(python-opencv) still remain with a Python 2.7 requirement, however,
which needs work upstream.

What can be done here? Would there be any prospect at all for a feature
freeze exception so as to ship OpenCV 3 for Xenial? Once the base
libraries are available, the Python 3 packaging is a much lesser problem
and could even be done via PyPI.

[1] http://opencv.org/opencv-3-0-alpha.html
[2] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=799262
[3] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=792677

[Mike Gogulski (mi2e)]

Subscribing, this affects me too.

[Stephen Birch (sgbirch)]

I have just started using xenial to prep our own software for the release. I was shocked that CV 3.0 is not installed. Surely this should be an exception to the feature freeze as already suggested, having to keep installing from source would be a huge pain.

[Mike Gogulski (mi2e)]

The final beta freeze for Xenial is coming up on the 24th according to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/XenialXerus/ReleaseSchedule

*prays that someone picks this up and champions an exception*

[gje (gertjan-e)]

FYI, it's probably too late to get into Xenial but currently there's a debian package for 3.0.0 on their experimental branch: https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/opencv

[combieone (u9yo1ovjgfwe28r1)]

Wow, this is outrageous, it needs to be fixed immediately. This fucks up everybody working in computer vision. This is a huge amount of people. OpenCV 2.4.9 is from 2014 and not even the bugfix releases up to 2.4.12 have made it into Ubuntu. 3.0 came out in 2015... and 3.1 in January this year. Come on. Compiling from source creates a huge hassle for everybody when you want to distribute your software or code. 99% of the people running our stuff are not nerds like us experienced developers that can compile OpenCV with CMake in 15mins. Ubuntu, you can do better than that. Not having 3.0/3.1 in 16.04 is a horrendous disappointment. This cannot happen.

[Stephen Birch (sgbirch)]

100% agree. This is a disaster for Ubuntu. OpenCV is hugely important to
a ton of people.

On Fri, Apr 8, 2016 at 4:29 PM, combieone <email address hidden>
wrote:

> Wow, this is outrageous, it needs to be fixed immediately. This fucks up
> everybody working in computer vision. This is a huge amount of people.
> OpenCV 2.4.9 is from 2014 and not even the bugfix releases up to 2.4.12
> have made it into Ubuntu. 3.0 came out in 2015... and 3.1 in January
> this year. Come on. Compiling from source creates a huge hassle for
> everybody when you want to distribute your software or code. 99% of the
> people running our stuff are not nerds like us experienced developers
> that can compile OpenCV with CMake in 15mins. Ubuntu, you can do better
> than that. Not having 3.0/3.1 in 16.04 is a horrendous disappointment.
> This cannot happen.
>
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[Raymond Liu (raaaaaymond)]

There is another pressing issue. When I tried to compile OpenCV 3.1.0 from source, it complains that GCC versions later than 4.9 are not supported. The version of GCC that ships with Ubuntu 16.04 is 5.3.1 I think, which is nice. So the fact that OpenCV doesn't support it is a real shame. I desperately need OpenCV 3.x for my work and this is a massive setback.

[Raymond Liu (raaaaaymond)]

UPDATE, it's not directly OpenCV's fault that GCC versions later than 4.9 are not supported. It's actually CUDA 7.5 that doesn't support GCC versions later than 4.9. There is a proposed solution at https://gist.github.com/wangruohui/679b05fcd1466bb0937f but I haven't tried it yet.

[Mattia Rizzolo (mapreri)]

As several people explained, that's not going to happen.
Libraries like this don't get updated in stable releases, much less when they are not even yet in the current development release... (it will be for zesty+1 though, I intend to make sure of it...)