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[gsoc16] Attn: We need 2016 mentors and project ideas for Boost!
by Niall Douglas 18 Jan '16

18 Jan '16

Dear Boost community, We are now within one month of the beginning of Google Summer of Code 2016! Last year's GSoC was a particularly momentus one as we witnessed the approval by the community for Boost.Hana to enter Boost - congratulations to Louis and his mentor Joel for bringing to Boost a very exciting new C++ library which pushes C++ compilers to their limits. We have also seen greatly improved retention of GSoC students in the community thanks to the improved student selection procedures introduced last year, and the fresh blood brought into Boost has been very evident on the mailing list this year. As part of filling in our application for 2016, we must supply to Google a list of potential GSoC mentors and potential GSoC projects for summer 2016 in order to be approved as an organisation this year. Therefore a lengthy page of awesome project ideas at https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/wiki/SoC2016 before *February 8th* would be an enormous help to getting us approved again this year and bringing to Boost another US$35,000 of Google funding. If you think yourself able to mentor a student doing some work on Boost this summer, *please* consider adding a description of the proposed work item and your name to the list. Last year we had more slots awarded to us by Google than we had good combinations of student and mentor, so we had to return slots which I believe has not happened here at Boost GSoC in at least a decade. That means that your project ideas have a better chance than ever of receiving funding if you can find a good student, and that is best done by getting project ideas floated *early*. If you want to know more about mentoring a Google Summer of Code funded student work before you nominate yourself, please feel free to ask on the main Boost developers mailing list boost(a)lists.boost.org or via gsoc-admin(a)boost.org. Thank you in advance for your time. --- Boost C++ Libraries Google Summer of Code 2016 admin https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/wiki/SoC2016

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[boost][review][qvm] QVM formal review result
by Adam Wulkiewicz 04 Jan '16

04 Jan '16

Dear Boost community, The review period for Emil Dotchevski's QVM library has concluded. I'd like to thank everyone who participated in the discussions, esspecially those who sent formal reviews. Only four votes were casted however more people commented on issues on the mailing list. Comments received during the course of the review were generally positive, with a number of technical issues identified that need to be addressed. The review identified no fundamental problems in the design or implementation of the library that would entail rejection. The final version of the library can be fully accepted once Emil has addressed the issues identified during the review. Therefore I'm happy to say: Emil Dotchevski's Boost.QVM library is CONDITIONALLY ACCEPTED. Full report can be found here: http://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2016/01/227027.php Regards, Adam

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Boost 1.60.0 has been released
by Marshall Clow 17 Dec '15

17 Dec '15

Release 1.60.0 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 one new library and numerous enhancements and bug fixes for existing libraries. New Libraries * VMD: Variadic Macro Data library, from Edward Diener For details, including download links, see http://www.boost.org/users/news/version_1.60.0 You can also download directly from SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/boost/files/boost/1.60.0/ Tom Kent has made pre-built windows binaries, and they are available at: https://sourceforge.net/projects/boost/files/boost-binaries/1.60.0/ To install this release on your system, see http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/release/more/getting_started/index.html Thanks, --The Boost release team Vladimir Prus Rene Rivera Marshall Clow Eric Niebler Daniel James Beman Dawes

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Boost 1.60.0 rc1 is now available
by Marshall Clow 14 Dec '15

14 Dec '15

Release candidate files for 1.60.0 are available at: http://boost.cowic.de/rc/ As always, the release managers would appreciate it if you download the candidate of your choice and give building it a try. Please report both success and failure, and anything else that is noteworthy. This helps ensure the candidates build OK before we push them out to SourceForge. The files (and associated md5s) are: MD5 (boost_1_60_0_rc1.7z) = 7ce7f5a4e396484da8da6b60d4ed7661 MD5 (boost_1_60_0_rc1.tar.bz2) = 65a840e1a0b13a558ff19eeb2c4f0cbe MD5 (boost_1_60_0_rc1.tar.gz) = 28f58b9a33469388302110562bdf6188 MD5 (boost_1_60_0_rc1.zip) = 0cc5b9cf9ccdf26945b225c7338b4288 Thanks! -- The release managers P.S. Release notes are here: http://www.boost.org/users/history/version_1_60_0.html

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Boost release 1.60.0 beta 1 is now available from SourceForge
by Marshall Clow 08 Dec '15

08 Dec '15

Boost release 1.60.0 beta 1 is now available from SourceForge. See http://sourceforge.net/projects/boost/files/boost/1.60.0.beta.1/ For details of what's in the release, see http://www.boost.org/users/history/version_1_60_0.html. Note that the links to files on this web page are for the final release - use the SourceForge link above to get the beta files. Please download the beta, give it a try, and report any problems you encounter. Known issues: * Errors when building Boost.TypeErasure for older versions of Visual Studio. * Boost.Test fails when building on Darwin with gcc 4.9.2 The files (and associated md5s) are: MD5 (boost_1_60_0_b1.7z) = 63530c9594b24f56e5df79d910c9daeb MD5 (boost_1_60_0_b1.tar.bz2) = 29af12a1028536219a21517e953df4eb MD5 (boost_1_60_0_b1.tar.gz) = 74df7f5eb5e32f3a92b6141af3c6f541 MD5 (boost_1_60_0_b1.zip) = 90c25c34b64eb6cc88845ec5372938d7 Thanks, -- The Boost Release Team

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[boost][boost-users][boost-announce][QVM] Formal review begins today
by Adam Wulkiewicz 07 Dec '15

07 Dec '15

Dear Boost community, The formal review of Emil Dotchevski's QVM library begins today on 7th Dec and ends on 16th Dec. Boost QVM defines a set of generic functions and operator overloads for working with quaternions, vectors and matrices of static size with the emphasis on 2, 3 and 4-dimensional operations needed in graphics, video games and simulation applications. While it provides its own quaternion, matrix and vector types, it is designed to work primarily with user-defined types through user specializations of the q_traits, v_traits and m_traits templates. QVM's source code is available on Github: https://github.com/zajo/boost-qvm Full documentation is also viewable on Github: http://zajo.github.io/boost-qvm/ We encourage your participation in this review. At a minimum, kindly state: - Whether you believe the library should be accepted into Boost * Conditions for acceptance - Your name - Your knowledge of the problem domain. You are strongly encouraged to also provide additional information: - What is your evaluation of the library's: * Design * Implementation * Documentation * Tests * Usefulness - Did you attempt to use the library? If so: * Which compiler(s) * What was the experience? Any problems? - How much effort did you put into your evaluation of the review? More information about the review process can be found here: http://www.boost.org/community/reviews.html We await your feedback! Best regards, Adam Wulkiewicz

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[boost][qvm] Formal review for QVM
by Adam Wulkiewicz 05 Dec '15

05 Dec '15

Dear Boost community, The formal review of Emil Dotchevski's QVM library begins on 7th Dec and ends on 16th Dec. Boost QVM defines a set of generic functions and operator overloads for working with quaternions, vectors and matrices of static size with the emphasis on 2, 3 and 4-dimensional operations needed in graphics, video games and simulation applications. While it provides its own quaternion, matrix and vector types, it is designed to work primarily with user-defined types through user specializations of the q_traits, v_traits and m_traits templates. QVM's source code is available on Github: https://github.com/zajo/boost-qvm Full documentation is also viewable on Github: http://zajo.github.io/boost-qvm/ We encourage your participation in this review. At a minimum, kindly state: - Whether you believe the library should be accepted into Boost * Conditions for acceptance - Your name - Your knowledge of the problem domain. You are strongly encouraged to also provide additional information: - What is your evaluation of the library's: * Design * Implementation * Documentation * Tests * Usefulness - Did you attempt to use the library? If so: * Which compiler(s) * What was the experience? Any problems? - How much effort did you put into your evaluation of the review? More information about the review process can be found here: http://www.boost.org/community/reviews.html We await your feedback! Best regards, Adam Wulkiewicz

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Boost.Fiber mini-review report
by Nat Goodspeed 10 Oct '15

10 Oct '15

The mini-review of Boost.Fiber by Oliver Kowalke ran from Friday September 4th through Sunday September 13th. There was lively discussion, but only two actual reviews: Agustín K-ballo Bergé: not yet (list of issues below) Niall Douglas: yes, plus suggestions (below)[0] In addition I received two "review withheld" notes: Vicente J. Botet Escriba wanted me to address the previous review point by point. That seems like a reasonable request, and I apologize, but I too have time pressures. Giovanni Piero Deretta made suggestions (synopsized below) with the statement that he will make a recommendation when he sees the library author's progress along those lines. While in theory these results might seem like a hung jury, the very paucity of formal reviews supports a cautious approach. The verdict is: not yet, with specific points as noted below. No reviewer explicitly designated specific points as being essential. (Niall Douglas explicitly designated his suggestions as post-adoption enhancements.) I have made an attempt to rank the recommendations received in descending order of importance to the community. My criteria are: Robustness: does lack of this request pose significant risk to a consuming program? API stability: could this request be considered an implementation detail, or would the change break early adopters? Demand: how many people requested the same thing? If you feel that I have misrepresented the importance of one of your points (or omitted something entirely), please respond. Ultimately, of course, the importance of any given point to the community at large will be reflected in the next mini-review. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Requests: Cross-thread fiber migration: Evidently the community strongly desires the ability to transfer a suspended fiber from one thread to another.[1] Of course there must be controls. Migration might be explicit; but if implicit, there must be a way to designate which fibers may and may not be migrated. An RAII class that temporarily disables migration would also be desirable -- for instance, to guarantee TLS consistency for some specific period. Cross-thread migration support implies a requirement to document the thread safety requirements of the customization API. Standard required timing specifications: meet (30.2.4 Timing specifications [thread.req.timing]). Adapt one or more existing test suites for thread facilities to validate the correctness of the Fiber library's synchronization constructs: e.g. from libc++, libstdc++, Boost.Thread, HPX. std::chrono support: ensure that wait_until() can accept any supported time_point specialization. (The library author asserts that this has already been fixed on the 'develop' branch.) C++11 compatibility: Agustín K-ballo Bergé volunteered to help with this point post-adoption. Paul Fultz offered fit::capture to emulate C++14 move capture. Document that this_fiber::yield() (et al.) are valid from main(), or in general from a thread function, as well as from explicitly-launched fibers. Make shared_state lock requirements explicit: for example, make mark_ready_and_notify_() accept a std::unique_lock<>& (or &&) to force its caller to provide one. Avoid holding mutex during condition_variable::notify_*() calls. (The library author asserts that this has already been fixed on the 'develop' branch.) packaged_task must not decay-copy its task arguments. Align fibers::async() signature, result description and invoke_helper implementation with std::async(). Avoid returning std::move(...). Wait list implementation: try an intrusive linked list of fiber_context objects. Avoid sleeping thread when no fibers are ready -- block on external event. Better handling of waiting tasks (decentralized wait queues?). Optimization to resume awakened fiber on the thread that awakens it. Template redundancy: eliminate duplication between specializations for T, T& and void. The future, shared_future, shared_state, promise and task_object templates were specifically cited. Leverage predicate-based condition::wait() overload internally. Nested schedulers: make schedulers be schedulable entities themselves. Improve robustness of `promise' handling in Asynchronous Callbacks documentation. Avoid overconfident remarks about it. Fix Note overstating the requirements on condition_variable::wait(). The discussion also surfaced the desirability of Grand Unified Future Theory, but it was generally agreed that this is out of scope. Put differently, it would be unreasonable to put the onus on Fiber to solve that very broad cross-library problem. Many thanks to all participants, and thanks especially to Oliver Kowalke for all his work on this library! Nat Goodspeed Boost.Fiber Review Manager ________________________________ [0] Niall Douglas snuck his review recommendation into the following mail message: http://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2015/09/225228.php (second to final paragraph). His suggestions were in private mail. [1] Giovanni Deretta suggests that it might be possible to allocate -- without actually running -- an actual kernel thread per fiber, simply to give each fiber its own TLS area.

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[Boost-users] Compile and run Boost examples online
by Antony Polukhin 25 Sep '15

25 Sep '15

Hi all, I've just launched the beta version of online examples for the "Boost Application Development Cookbook": http://apolukhin.github.io/Boost-Cookbook-4880OS/ There you can do online compilation of Boost related code, run examples, freely experiment with code from the book, read intros for the code and play around with the Boost libraries. I hope the site would be useful! P.S.: If you wish to report an error or wish to have some functionality added to the site, use the "Issues" link at https://github.com/apolukhin/Boost-Cookbook-4880OS or even make a pull request. P.P.S.: Intros for Chapters 7-12 are missing at this moment. I'll add them in a few months, sorry for the delay. -- Best regards, Antony Polukhin

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Boost.Fiber mini-review September 4-13
by Nat Goodspeed 04 Sep '15

04 Sep '15

Hi all, The mini-review of Boost.Fiber by Oliver Kowalke begins today, Friday September 4th, and closes Sunday September 13th. It was reviewed in January 2014; the verdict at that time was "not in its present form." Since then Oliver has substantially improved documentation, performance, library customization and the underlying implementation, and is bringing the library back for mini-review. The substance of the library API remains the same, which is why a mini-review is appropriate. The Fiber library now requires a C++14-conforming compiler. I will monitor reviews and discussion on both the boost-users@ list and the boost@ developers' list. Please include at least "fiber" and "review" in your mail subject, e.g. by replying to this message. (Please reply to only ONE list, however.) Thank you for your interest and your feedback! ----------------------------------------------------- About the library: Boost.Fiber provides a framework for micro-/userland-threads (fibers) scheduled cooperatively. The API contains classes and functions to manage and synchronize fibers similar to Boost.Thread. Each fiber has its own stack. A fiber can save the current execution state, including all registers and CPU flags, the instruction pointer, and the stack pointer and later restore this state. The idea is to have multiple execution paths running on a single thread using a sort of cooperative scheduling (versus threads, which are preemptively scheduled). The running fiber decides explicitly when it should yield to allow another fiber to run (context switching). Boost.Fiber internally uses execution_context from Boost.Context; the classes in this library manage, schedule and, when needed, synchronize those contexts. A context switch between threads usually costs thousands of CPU cycles on x86, compared to a fiber switch with a few hundred cycles. A fiber can only run on a single thread at any point in time. docs: http://olk.github.io/libs/fiber/doc/html/index.html git: https://github.com/olk/boost-fiber --------------------------------------------------- Please always state in your review whether you think the library should be accepted as a Boost library! Additionally please consider giving feedback on the following general topics: - 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? Nat Goodspeed Boost.Fiber Review Manager ________________________________

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