May 2010 - Boost-announce - lists.preview.boost.org

Review Wizard Report for May 2010
by Ronald Garcia 26 May '10

26 May '10

============================================== Review Wizard Status Report for May 2010 ============================================== News ==== Boost 1.42 Released New Libraries: UUID Revised Libraries: Asio, Circular Buffer, Fusion, Graph, Integer, Iostreams, Program.Options, Property Map, Proto, Regex, Spirit, Unordered, Xpressive Meta State Machine (MSM) Library Accepted Boost 1.43 Released New Libraries: Functional/Factory, Functional/Forward Revised Libraries: Range, Accumulators, Array, Asio, Fusion, Iostreams, Multi-index Containers, Proto, Random, Spirit, Thread, Unordered, Uuid, Wave, Xpressive Open Issues =========== The Constrained Value Library was reviewed in December 2008 but no review result has been reported. We would appreciate it if someone who knows the review manager, Jeff Garland, could contact him. The following libraries have been accepted to Boost, but have not yet been submitted to SVN: * Time Series (accepted August 2007). * Floating Point Utilities (accepted March 2008). * Futures (accepted April 2009). * Polygon Library (accepted November 2009). * Geometry Library (accepted November 2009). * Meta State Machine (accepted January 2010). The following libraries have been accepted provisionally to Boost, but have not been submitted for mini-review and full acceptance: * Switch (accepted provisionally January 2008) * Phoenix (accepted provisionally September 2008) General Announcements ===================== As always, we need experienced review managers. The review queue has grown substantially but we have few volunteers, so manage reviews if possible and if not please make sure to watch the review schedule and participate. Please take a look at the list of libraries in need of managers and check out their descriptions. In general review managers are active boost participants or library contributors. If you can serve as review manager for any of them, email Ron Garcia or John Phillips, "garcia at osl dot iu dot edu" and "phillips at mps dot ohio-state dot edu" respectively. We are also suffering from a lack of reviewers. While we all understand time pressures and the need to complete paying work, the strength of Boost is based on the detailed and informed reviews submitted by you. A recent effort is trying to secure at least five people who promise to submit reviews as a precondition to starting the review period. Consider volunteering for this and even taking the time to create the review as early as possible. No rule says you can only work on a review during the review period. A link to this report will be posted to www.boost.org. If you would like us to make any modifications or additions to this report before we do that, please email Ron or John. If you're a library author and plan on submitting a library for review in the next 3-6 months, send Ron or John a short description of your library and we'll add it to the Libraries Under Construction below. We know that there are many libraries that are near completion, but we have hard time keeping track all of them. Please keep us informed about your progress. The included review queue isn't a classic queue. It is more an unordered list of the libraries awaiting review. As such, any library in the queue can be reviewed once the developer is ready and a review manager works with the wizards and the developer to schedule a review. It is not FIFO. Review Queue ============ * Lexer * Shifted Pointer * Logging * Join * Pimpl * Task * Endian * Conversion * Sorting * GIL.IO * AutoBuffer * String Convert * Containers * Type Traits Extensions * Interthreads * Bitfield * Lockfree * Fiber * Chrono * Sequence Properties * Static Size Linear Algebra * Locale -------------------- Lexer ----- :Author: Ben Hanson :Review Manager: Eric Neibler :Download: `Boost Vault <http://boost-consulting.com/vault/index.php?action=downloadfile&filename=bo… >`__ :Description: A programmable lexical analyser generator inspired by 'flex'. Like flex, it is programmed by the use of regular expressions and outputs a state machine as a number of DFAs utilising equivalence classes for compression. Shifted Pointer --------------- :Author: Phil Bouchard :Review Manager: Needed :Download: `Boost Vault <http://www.boost-consulting.com/vault/index.php?&direction=0&order=&directo… >`__ :Description: Smart pointers are in general optimized for a specific resource (memory usage, CPU cycles, user friendliness, ...) depending on what the user need to make the most of. The purpose of this smart pointer is mainly to allocate the reference counter (or owner) and the object itself at the same time so that dynamic memory management is simplified thus accelerated and cheaper on the memory map. Logging ------- :Author: John Torjo :Review Manager: Gennadiy Rozental :Download: http://torjo.com/log2/ :Description: Used properly, logging is a very powerful tool. Besides aiding debugging/testing, it can also show you how your application is used. The Boost Logging Library allows just for that, supporting a lot of scenarios, ranging from very simple (dumping all to one destination), to very complex (multiple logs, some enabled/some not, levels, etc). It features a very simple and flexible interface, efficient filtering of messages, thread-safety, formatters and destinations, easy manipulation of logs, finding the best logger/filter classes based on your application's needs, you can define your own macros and much more! Join ---- :Author: Yigong Liu :Review Manager: Needed :Download: http://channel.sourceforge.net/ :Description: Join is an asynchronous, message based C++ concurrency library based on join calculus. It is applicable both to multi-threaded applications and to the orchestration of asynchronous, event-based applications. It follows Comega's design and implementation and builds with Boost facilities. It provides a high level concurrency API with asynchronous methods, synchronous methods, and chords which are "join-patterns" defining the synchronization, asynchrony, and concurrency. Pimpl ----- :Author: Vladimir Batov :Review Manager: Needed :Download: | `Boost Vault <http://www.boost-consulting.com/vault/index.php?action=downloadfile&filenam… >`__ | http://www.ddj.com/cpp/205918714 (documentation) :Description: The Pimpl idiom is a simple yet robust technique to minimize coupling via the separation of interface and implementation and then implementation hiding. This library provides a convenient yet flexible and generic deployment technique for the Pimpl idiom. It's seemingly complete and broadly applicable, yet minimal, simple and pleasant to use. Task ---- :Author: Oliver Kowalke :Review Manager: Needed :Download: `Boost Vault <http://www.boostpro.com/vault/index.php?action=downloadfile&filename=bo… >`__ :Description: Formerly called Thread Pool The library provides: * thread creation policies: * determines the management of worker threads: * fixed set of threads in pool * create workerthreads on demand (depending on context) * let worker threads ime out after certain idle time * channel policies: manages access to queued tasks: * bounded channel with high and low watermark for queuing tasks * unbounded channel with unlimited number of queued tasks * rendezvous syncron hand-over between producer and consumer threads * queueing policy: determines how tasks will be removed from channel: * FIFO * LIFO * priority queue (attribute assigned to task) * smart insertions and extractions (for instance remove oldest task with certain attribute by newest one) * tasks can be chained and lazy submit of taks is also supported (thanks to Braddocks future library). * returns a task object from the submit function. The task it self can be interrupted if its is cooperative (means it has some interruption points in its code -> ``this_thread::interruption_point()`` ). Endian ------ :Author: Beman Dawes :Review Manager: Needed :Download: http://mysite.verizon.net/beman/endian-0.10.zip :Description: Conversion ---------- :Author: Vicente Botet :Review Manager: Needed :Download: `Boost Vault <http://www.boostpro.com/vault/index.php?action=downloadfile&filename=co… >`__ :Description: Generic explicit conversion between unrelated types. Boost.Conversion provides: * a generic ``convert_to`` function which can be specialized by the user to make explicit conversion between unrelated types. * a generic ``assign_to`` function which can be specialized by the user to make explicit assignation between unrelated types. * conversion between ``std::complex`` of explicitly convertible types. * conversion between ``std::pair`` of explicitly convertible types. * conversion between ``boost::optional`` of explicitly convertible types. * conversion between ``boost::rational`` of explicitly convertible types. * conversion between ``boost::interval`` of explicitly convertible types. * conversion between ``boost::chrono::time_point`` and ``boost::ptime``. * conversion between ``boost::chrono::duration`` and ``boost::time_duration``. Sorting ------- :Author: Steven Ross :Review Manager: Needed :Download: `Boost Vault <http://www.boostpro.com/vault/index.php?action=downloadfile&filename=al… >`__ :Description: A grouping of 3 templated hybrid radix/comparison-based sorting algorithms that provide superior worst-case and average-case performance to std::sort: integer_sort, which sorts fixed-size data types that support a rightshift (default of >>) and a comparison (default of <) operator. float_sort, which sorts standard floating-point numbers by safely casting them to integers. string_sort, which sorts variable-length data types, and is optimized for 8-bit character strings. All 3 algorithms have O(n(k/s + s)) runtime where k is the number of bits in the data type and s is a constant, and limited memory overhead (in the kB for realistic inputs). In testing, integer_sort varies from 35% faster to 8X as fast as std::sort, depending on processor, compiler optimizations, and data distribution. float_sort is roughly 7X as fast as std::sort on x86 processors. string_sort is roughly 2X as fast as std::sort. GIL.IO ------ :Author: Christian Henning :Review Manager: Needed :Download: `GIL Google Code Vault <http://gil-contributions.googlecode.com/files/rc2.zip >`__ :Description: I/O extension for boost::gil which allows reading and writing of/in various image formats ( tiff, jpeg, png, etc ). This review will also include the Toolbox extension which adds some common functionality to gil, such as new color spaces, algorithms, etc. AutoBuffer ---------- :Author: Thorsten Ottosen :Review Manager: Needed :Download: `Here <http://www.cs.aau.dk/~nesotto/boost/ auto_buffer.zip>`__ :Description: Boost.AutoBuffer provides a container for efficient dynamic, local buffers. Furthermore, the container may be used as an alternative to std::vector, offering greater flexibility and sometimes better performance. String Convert -------------- :Author: Vladimir Batov :Review Manager: Needed :Download: `Boost Vault <http://www.boostpro.com/vault/index.php?action=downloadfile&filename=bo… >`__ :Description: The library takes the approach of boost::lexical_cast in the area of string-to-type and type-to-string conversions, builds on the past boost::lexical_cast experience and advances that conversion functionality further to additionally provide: * throwing and non-throwing conversion-failure behavior; * support for the default value to be returned when conversion fails; * two types of the conversion-failure check -- basic and better/safe; * formatting support based on the standard I/O Streams and the standard (or user-defined) I/O Stream-based manipulators (like std::hex, std::scientific, etc.); * locale support; * support for boost::range-compliant char and wchar_t-based string containers; * no DefaultConstructibility requirement for the Target type; * consistent framework to uniformly incorporate any type-to-type conversions. It is an essential tool with applications making extensive use of configuration files or having to process/prepare considerable amounts of data in, say, XML, etc. Containers ---------- :Author: Ion Gaztanaga :Review Manager: Needed :Download: http://www.boostpro.com/vault/index.php?action=downloadfile&filename=boost.… :Documentation: http://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/sandbox/move/libs/container/doc/html/index.h… :Description: Boost.Container library implements several well-known containers, including STL containers. The aim of the library is to offers advanced features not present in standard containers or to offer the latest standard draft features for compilers that comply with C++03. Type Traits Extensions -------------------------- :Author: Frederic Bron :Review Manager: Needed :Download: http://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/browser/sandbox/type_traits :Description: The purpose of the addition is to add type traits to detect if types T and U are comparable in the sense of <, <=, >, >=, == or != operators, i.e. if t<u has a sens when t is of type T and u of type U (same for <=, >, >=, ==, !=). The following traits are added: is_equal_to_comparable<T,U> is_greater_comparable<T,U> is_greater_equal_comparable<T,U> is_less_comparable<T,U> is_less_equal_comparable<T,U> is_not_equal_to_comparable<T,U> The names are based on the corresponding names of the standard template library (<functional> header, section 20.3.3 of the standard). The code has the following properties: * returns true if t<u is meaningful and returns a value convertible to bool * returns false if t<u is meaningless. * fails with compile time error if t<u is meaningful and returns void (a possibility to avoid compile time error would be to return true with an operator, trick but this has little sens as returning false would be better) InterThreads ------------------- :Author: Vicente J. Botet Escriba :Review Manager: Needed :Download: `Boost Vault <http://www.boostpro.com/vault/index.php?action=downloadfile&filename=in… >`__ :Description: Boost.InterThreads extends Boost.Threads adding some features: * thread decorator: thread_decorator allows to define setup/cleanup functions which will be called only once by thread: setup before the thread function and cleanup at thread exit. * thread specific shared pointer: this is an extension of the thread_specific_ptr providing access to this thread specific context from other threads. As it is shared the stored pointer is a shared_ptr instead of a raw one. * thread keep alive mechanism: this mechanism allows to detect threads that do not prove that they are alive by calling to the keep_alive_point regularly. When a thread is declared dead a user provided function is called, which by default will abort the program. * thread tuple: defines a thread groupe where the number of threads is know statically and the threads are created at construction time. * set_once: a synchonizer that allows to set a variable only once, notifying to the variable value to whatever is waiting for that. * thread_tuple_once: an extension of the boost::thread_tuple which allows to join the thread finishing the first, using for that the set_once synchronizer. * thread_group_once: an extension of the boost::thread_group which allows to join the thread finishing the first, using for that the set_once synchronizer. (thread_decorator and thread_specific_shared_ptr) are based on the original implementation of threadalert written by Roland Schwarz. Boost.InterThreads extends Boost.Threads adding thread setup/cleanup decorator, thread specific shared pointer, thread keep alive mechanism and thread tuples. Bitfield --------------- :Author: Vicente J. Botet Escriba :Review Manager: Needed :Download: http://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/sandbox/bitfield with documentation available at http://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/sandbox/bitfield/libs/bitfield/doc/index.html :Description: Portable bitfields traits. Boost.Bitfield consists of: * a generic bitfield traits class providing generic getter and setter methods. * a BOOST_BITFIELD_DCL macro making easier the definition of the bitfield traits and the bitfield getter and setter functions. Lockfree ------------------ :Author: Tim Blechmann :Review Manager: Needed :Download: http://www.boostpro.com/vault/index.php?action=downloadfile&filename=bo… ; :Documentation: http://tim.klingt.org/boost_lockfree/ :Description: boost.lockfree provides implementations of lock-free data structures. lock-free data structures can be accessed by multiple threads without the necessity of blocking synchronization primitives such as guards. lock-free data structures can be used in real-time systems, where blocking algorithms may lead to high worst-case execution times, to avoid priority inversion, or to increase the scalability for multi-processor machines. boost.lockfree provides: * boost::lockfree::fifo, a lock-free fifo queue * boost::lockfree::stack, a lock-free stack the code is available from from my personal git repository: * git://tim.klingt.org/boost_lockfree.git * http://tim.klingt.org/git?p=boost_lockfree.git Fiber ----- :Author: Oliver Kowalke :Review Manager: Needed Download: http://www.boostpro.com/vault/index.php?action=downloadfile&filename=bo… ; :Description: C++ Library for launching fibers (micro-threads) and synchronizing data between the fibers. Chrono ------ :Author: Vicente Botet :Review Manager: Needed :Download: http://www.boostpro.com/vault/index.php?action=downloadfile&filename=ch… ; :Documentation: http://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/sandbox/chrono/libs/chrono/doc/html/index.ht… . :Description: The Boost Chrono library provides: The C++0x Standard Library's common_type. The C++0x Standard Library's compile-time rational arithmetic. The C++0x Standard Library's time utilities, including: Class template duration Class template time_point Clocks: system_clock monotonic_clock high_resolution_clock typeof registration for classes duration and time_point Process clocks: process_real_CPU_clocks, capturing real-CPU times. process_user_CPU_clocks, capturing user-CPU times. process_system_CPU_clocks, capturing system-CPU times. process_cpu_clock, tuple-like class capturing at once real, user- CPU, and system-CPU times. Stopwatches: stopwatch, capturing elapsed Clock times. stopwatch_accumulator, capturing cummulated elapsed Clock times. scoped helper classes allowing to pairwise start/stop operations, suspend/resume and resume/suspend a Stopwatch. Stopclocks or Stopwatch reporters: stopwatch_reporter, convenient reporting of models of Stopwatch results. stopclock<Clock> shortcut of stopwatch_reporter<stopwatch<Clock>> Support wide characters for stopwatch formatters Sequence Properties ------------------- :Author: Grant Erickson :Review Manager: Needed :Download: http://www.boostpro.com/vault/index.php?action=downloadfile&filename=cr… :Description: The creasing algorithm templates define four template functions for determining the order properties of sequences, specifically: * Increasing * Decreasing * Strictly Increasing * Strictly Decreasing The implementation is a fairly trivial composition of the STL adjacent_find, not2 and {greater,less,greater_equal,less_equal}. For the purposes of sequence ordering validation, using these templates is more efficient and straightforward than creating a temporary, sorted version of some sequence and comparing it against the original sequence. Example: :: bool CheckPoints(const Points & inPoints) { const bool strictlyIncreasing = is_strictly_increasing(inPoints.begin(), inPoints.end()); if (!strictlyIncreasing) { cerr << "Points must be in increasing order with " "no duplicate values." << endl; } return strictlyIncreasing; } Static Size Linear Algebra -------------------------- :Author: Emil Dotchevski :Review Manager: Needed :Download: :Description: Locale ------ :Author: Artyom Beilis :Review Manager: Needed :Download: https://sourceforge.net/projects/cppcms/files/boost_locale/boost_locale_for… :Description: Boost.Locale is powerful localization library that provides powerful localization tool extending existing built-in C++ localization facilities in Unicode aware way. Libraries under development =========================== Persistent ---------- :Author: Tim Blechmann :Description: A library, based on Boost.Serialization, that provides access to persistent objects with an interface as close as possible to accessing regular objects in memory. * object ownership concepts equivalent to the ones used by Boost.SmartPtr: shared, weak, scoped (and raw) * ACID transactions, including recovery after a crash and "Serializable" isolation level * concurrent transactions, nested transactions, distributed transactions * concurrent access containers: STL containers whose nodes are implemented as persistent objects and can be accessed without moving the container to memory. Concurrent transactions modifying the container are only repeated in the rare cases the same container node is changed simultanisouly by 2 threads. * extensible by other transactional resources, e.g. an object relational mapper based on the upcoming Boost.Rdb library. Multiple resources can be combined to one database, with distributed transactions among them. Please let us know of any libraries you are currently developing that you intend to submit for review. See http://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/wiki/LibrariesUnderConstruction for a current listing of libraries under development.

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[Review] Formal Review: Boost.Move
by OvermindDL1 25 May '10

25 May '10

Greetings Boost Developers and Users, It's my pleasure to announce that the review of Ion Gaztañagas' Move library starts May 10th and lasts until May 24th, 2010, unless an extension occurs. What is it? =========== The Boost.Move library would supply an emulated C++1x Move semantics interface, aka RValue References, allowing for a wide variety of easy to use and easy to add in optimization abilities. The most used function it would add would be: val_b = boost::move( val_a ); Which would move val_a to val_b; val_a should not be used after this line. This semantic allows for a vast amount of optimizations, especially in regards to temporaries, see the documentation for further examples and use. Other patterns emulated are && rvalue references for functions/members and constructors. There are also a number of STL containers in the sandbox that support move semantics using this library for higher efficiency. Getting the library =================== The latest version of this library may be downloaded from SVN: http://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/sandbox/move/ and the docs may be viewed here Docs: http://igaztanaga.drivehq.com/libs/move/doc/html/index.html and do note, this library is header-only and is designed to be absolutely generic to be useful in all areas of C++ programming. Writing a review ================ If you feel this is an interesting library, then please submit your review to the developer list (preferably), or to the review manager. Here are some questions you might want to answer in your review: - What is your evaluation of the design? - What is your evaluation of the implementation? - What is your evaluation of the documentation? - What is your evaluation of the potential usefulness of the library? - Did you try to use the library? With what compiler? Did you have any problems? - How much effort did you put into your evaluation? A glance? A quick - reading? In-depth study? - Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain? And finally, every review should answer this question: - Do you think the library should be accepted as a Boost library? Be sure to say this explicitly so that your other comments don't obscure your overall opinion. Special considerations ====================== If you want or need a primer on the subject, please look at the working draft for C++1x. This linked site has also been shown to be quite useful in describing move usefulness: Want Speed? Pass by Value.: http://cpp-next.com/archive/2009/08/want-speed-pass-by-value/ Move It With Rvalue References: http://cpp-next.com/archive/2009/09/move-it-with-rvalue-references/ And there are further links in that series, but those two will get you started in the domain. Best regards, OvermindDL1, Review Manager (Boost.Move)

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[1.43.0] Release notice
by Beman Dawes 06 May '10

06 May '10

Release 1.43.0 of the Boost C++ Libraries is now available. These open-source libraries work well with the C++ Standard Library, and are usable across a broad spectrum of applications. The Boost license encourages both commercial and non-commercial use. This release contains two new libraries (functional/factory, functional/forward), a major range library upgrade, plus numerous enhancements and bug fixes for other libraries. For details, including download links, see http://www.boost.org/users/news/version_1_43_0 The release can also be downloaded directly from SourceForge. See http://sourceforge.net/projects/boost/files/ To install this release on your system, see http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_43_0/more/getting_started/index.html Thanks to all who contributed, --The Boost release team

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