October 2005 - Boost - lists.preview.boost.org

[Bug][Tools] Incomplete tool documentation, especially for building
by Daryle Walker 16 Oct '05

16 Oct '05

[This is for the versions at <http://www.boost.org>.] [I don't know if this should/could be placed in the Bug Tracker.] While answering a post about BCP on another list, I noticed that the docs for BCP (at <http://www.boost.org/tools/bcp/bcp.html>) never actually say where one would get BCP from! Looking at my local archive, I see the BCP source files are in the same directory as the BCP doc file. I noticed that they are C++ code; I suspected that BCP could have been a (Python) script or (if I didn't respond to a question asking why not) pre-made executables. I feel that the BCP docs should explain how to get BCP. In fact the QuickBook and Wave tools have the same problem. (The source for both is C++-based and in different subdirectories in the "tools" directory, but the docs never tell you that!) The other tools (build, regression, inspect, and BoostBook) do have building directions, but they're either indirectly linked or plainly presented. QuickBook has another problem in that it has no table of contents. I thought the docs were severely incomplete until I finally saw the little right arrow symbols at the two right-side corners. Nor did I know how big the QB docs were until I had to traverse every page through a chain of right arrow links. The Wave-tool docs have a different additional problem in that it's mixed in the Wave-library docs. The traversal symbols on that page shouldn't be followed since they can't help with the tool (just with Wave-library). The page isn't next to the Wave-tool source code, either. -- Daryle Walker Mac, Internet, and Video Game Junkie darylew AT hotmail DOT com

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[config] <iosfwd> and g++ 2.95
by Daniel James 16 Oct '05

16 Oct '05

select_stdlib_config.hpp has just been changed to include <iosfwd> instead of <utility>. But g++ 2.95's standard library has its own iostreams implementation which doesn't define __STL_CONFIG_H. It does define __IOSFWD__, so maybe that could be checked for as well? Is it okay to commit the attached patch? I've changed sgi.hpp to go back to including <utility> if __STL_CONFIG_H isn't defined so that anything that checks for _STL_CONFIG_H will still work. Also, if __IOSFWD__ happens to be used in another library, it will fail to compile. Daniel

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concurrent_hash_map, RFC
by Peter Dimov 16 Oct '05

16 Oct '05

A preliminary documentation for a concurrent_hash_map is available: http://www.pdimov.com/cpp/concurrent_hash_map.html There exists a prototype implementation for that :-) and I'll post it online after a bit of cleanup. I have a question on the interface that hopefully may be of interest to someone. concurrent_hash_map implements the following member function: template<class F> bool find_and_visit( K const & k, F f ); that looks up the element with a key k in the map and, if found, invokes f on its associated value. This can be useful in a number of situations, but it poses the following problem: what if two threads call find_and_visit at the same time with the same k and f modifies its argument? Should the map serialize the two calls to f, or should it leave the responsibility of ensuring proper synchronization (or atomic update, if the mapped_type allows it) to the user? Thanks in advance for any comments/opinions on the interface. -- Peter Dimov http://www.pdimov.com

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Boost Birds of Feather @ OOPSLA 05? (try 2)
by Jeff Garland 15 Oct '05

15 Oct '05

All - I'm going to be in San Diego @ OOPSLA next week and I'm wondering if any Boost users and developers would be interested in getting together for a BOF one evening. Obvious topic of discussion is all things Boost/C++/TR2. Right now I'm thinking Tuesday night would be a good time. Let me know if there is interest and I'll set this up. Jeff Note, I cross-posted to the user and developer list b/c the idea is this would be open to everyone with an interest in Boost.

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Boost Birds of Feather @ OOPSLA 05?
by Jeff Garland 15 Oct '05

15 Oct '05

All - I'm going to be in San Diego @ OOPSLA next week and I'm wondering if any Boost users and developers would be interested in getting together for a BOF one evening. Obvious topic of discussion is all things Boost/C++/TR2. Right now I'm thinking Tuesday night would be a good time. Let me know if there is interest and I'll set this up. Jeff Note, I cross-posted to the user and developer list b/c the idea is this would be open to everyone with an interest in Boost.

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Where do we get dark magic, evil-looking sacrificial knives and virgins?[1]
by Andreas Pokorny 15 Oct '05

15 Oct '05

Hi, Some weeks ago someone metioned that we need a C++ variant of CPAN or CTAN. The idea is really great. But I have no clue where we would start. How should that service look like, and work internally? I think we need some identifcation service for authors, maybe some access control on the packages stored in the serivce. The client frontend will need something to select mirrors, track dependencies to other packages. An auto build, intstall and test feature would be nice too. As Martin Wille just mentioned, something with some of these features already exists. Gentoos portage [2], written in python handles, dependencies, integrates a mirror selector, automatically build installs and uinstalls packages fetched as source code. The package scripts are shared using rsync[3]. The package source files are automatically distributed into their mirror system. The only missing thing is the author identification and access control part. Gentoo "works" with an indirect system, requiring authors to provide scripts, or users to beg for packages in their bugzilla system. Another interesting system could be provided by monotone[4], a very nice distributed version control system. We could use monotone to replace rsync, in the suggestion above. Monotone provides a secure system to get the build scripts anonymously, and allows identifying authors. The distributive character of monotone allows very intersting use cases, in which authors are able to update and provide new versions of their software. [1] http://www.cpan.org/misc/cpan-faq.html#How_does_the_CPAN_work [2] http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/about.xml [3] http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/ [4] http://venge.net/monotone/ Regards Andreas Pokorny

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[Serialization] why operator &()?
by Jim Hyslop 15 Oct '05

15 Oct '05

I've been looking at the serialization library (nice work, Robert) and I have a question. I searched the archives and didn't see any discussion on this, and I'm sorry I missed all the pre-approval discussion, or I would have said something sooner. What is the rationale behind using 'operator &()' to mean 'serialize this item?' I find a statement like 'ar & member1;' to be very non-intuitive: how does bitwise-and relate to serialization? It seems to me that most sensible code guidelines admonish against this kind of operator abuse (pardon my bluntness, but that's what it is when you get down to it). -- Jim

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Re: [boost] [ANN] Phoenix-2 prerelease
by Lucas Galfaso 15 Oct '05

15 Oct '05

typo? The "Algorithm" page reads: find_end(r1, r2[, f]) find_end(begin(r1), end(r1), begin(r2), end(r2)[, f]) is this right? (look at the extra [ ] ) Anyhow, impresive work!!!! LG "Joel de Guzman" <joel(a)boost-consulting.com> wrote in message news:dijjbq$9uf$1@sea.gmane.org... > Hi, > > Here's a pre-release package of Phoenix-2. Jaakko and I agreed > that it will be the basis of the Phoenix and Boost Lambda > merger. This version is Phoenix 1 + Lambda + a lot more. > > Take note though that this is not a drop-in replacement of > Phoenix-1 for Spirit users. In particular, there is no > closure support. Phoenix-2 has true local variables. The > plan for Spirit-2 is to replace closures with local variables. > > Docs: http://tinyurl.com/77pz5 > > The pre-release package is here: > http://spirit.sourceforge.net/dl_more/phoenix_v2.zip > > Just drop it where Phoenix-1 is and run the examples/tests. > Comments, feedback very welcome! > > Cheers, > -- > Joel de Guzman > http://www.boost-consulting.com > http://spirit.sf.net > > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.Net email is sponsored by: > Power Architecture Resource Center: Free content, downloads, discussions, > and more. http://solutions.newsforge.com/ibmarch.tmpl

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Macros at namespace scope: trailing semicolon?
by David Abrahams 14 Oct '05

14 Oct '05

I am defining a macro, BOOST_PARAMETER_KEYWORD(tag_namespace, name) that declares a keyword for the Parameter library. It has to be used at namespace scope. I have the option to define it so that correct usage requires a trailing semicolon, or so that the trailing semicolon is forbidden. Unfortunately I don't have the ability to make it optional. Which should I choose? IMO there's no chance of confusing it with a function call, since a function call would be illegal in the context in which it's used, and people are naturally more likely to add a semicolon without thinking about it, and if I design the macro so that a semicolon is required it will interact more smoothly with editors and pretty-printers. So I can't see any good reason not to require the semicolon. Arguments? -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com

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[wave] Using wave to preprocess boost headers
by Thomas Andersen 14 Oct '05

14 Oct '05

I have tried to get wave to preprocess the boost headers. However I get an error in cstdint.hpp line 246 # if ULONG_MAX == 18446744073709551615 // 2**64 - 1 error: ill formed integer literal or integer constant too large: 18446744073709551615 Have anybody else encountered this problem, and found a way around it? Best regards, Thomas Andersen

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