November 2009 - Boost - lists.preview.boost.org

[random] Compilation errors in linear_congruential.hpp because of min()/max()
by Hartmut Kaiser 17 Nov '09

17 Nov '09

Hi, I'm getting compilations errors against Boost trunk from inside linear_congruential.hpp:+89 on VS2010 because of min()/max() being used without safeguarding them against accidental macro substitution: assert(_x >= min()); assert(_x <= max()); if I replace this with assert(_x >= (min)()); assert(_x <= (max)()); the compiler errors go away. Regards Hartmut ------------------- Meet me at BoostCon http://boostcon.com

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[Function] Interest in boost::functions that take and return references to self-type?
by Tony Astolfi 16 Nov '09

16 Nov '09

Would there be interest in adding a feature to boost::function that allows a function to accept as input and return values of the same type as itself? I think this would be useful for implementing state machines. Something like: typedef boost::function< boost::function_self_type (event const&) > state_transition_fcn; state_transition_fcn initial_state (event const& e); state_transition_fcn second_state (event const& e); state_transition_fcn initial_state (event const& e) { if (/* some predicate on e*/) { // go to new state return &second_state; } else { // stay in old state return &initial_state; } } state_transition_fcn current_state = &initial_state; while (more_events) { current_state = current_state( next_event ); } -Tony Astolfi ps. Please point me in the right direction if such a thing already exists! Thanks!

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[Review] We're halfway through the GGL review
by Hartmut Kaiser 16 Nov '09

16 Nov '09

Hey all, We're halfway through the GGL review (see attached review announcement) it is planned to end November 15th. Now would be a good time to send in your reviews! Regards Hartmut ------------------- Meet me at BoostCon http://boostcon.com

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[Locale] Boost.Locale - preliminary code
by Artyom 16 Nov '09

16 Nov '09

Hello, I'm working on Boost.Locale project. Source code and some basic examples can be found here: https://cppcms.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/cppcms/boost_locale/trunk/ It still lacks of documentation and some features. It is mostly tested under Linux gcc-4.3 and it seems to work under MSVC-9 (however I had less tested it). General description: ==================== Boost.Locale is a library that brings high quality localization facilities in C++ way. It uses `std::locale`, and `std::locale` facets in order to pro- vide localization in transparent and C++ aware way to user. C++ has quite good base for localization via existing C++ locale facets: `std::num_put`, `std::ctype`, `std::collate` etc.. But they are very limited and sometimes buggy by design. The support of localization varies between different operating systems and incompatible between them. On the other hand, there is great, well debugged, high quality, widely used ICU library that gives all of the goodies but, it has very old API that mimics Java behavior, it is completely ignores STL and provides useful API only for UTF-16 encoded text, ignoring other popular Unicode encodings like UTF-8 and UTF-16, or limited national character sets like Latin1. Boost.Locale provides the natural glue between C++ locales framework, iostreams and powerful ICU library in following areas: - Correct case conversion, case folding and normalization (DONE) - Collation including support of 4 Unicode collation levels. (DONE) - Date and time formatting and parsing including support of timezones and calendars other then Gregorian. (DONE) - Number formatting, spelling and parsing (DONE) - Monetary formatting and parsing (DONE) - Powerful message formatting including support plural forms, using GNU catalogs. (DONE) - Character, word, sentence and line-break boundary analysis. (TODO) - Support of 8-bit character sets like Latin1 and UTF-8 encoded text. (DONE) - Support of `char`, `wchar_t` and C++0x `char16_t`, `char32_t` strings and streams. (DONE) ------------------------------------------------------------ FYI, It is still work in progress but 90% of the job is done. Please take a look on it --- especially experts in Windows programming. I would glad if someone explains me the process of submission and what should be done for it. I know that it is not yet Boost ready but it goes fast in this direction. Best, Artyom.

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[1.41.0] Beta 1 available
by Beman Dawes 16 Nov '09

16 Nov '09

Boost release 1.40.1 beta 1 is available from SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/boost/files/ This release contains one new libraries and numerous bug fixes for existing libraries. For details, see http://beta.boost.org/users/news/version_1_41_0for details. To install the beta on your system, see http://beta.boost.org/doc/libs/1_40_0/more/getting_started/index.html Please report any problems with the beta on the developers or users mailing list. Unless unexpected problems arise, the plan is to ship the final 1.40.0 release in a week to ten days. Thanks, --The Boost release team

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[1.41][serialization] MSVC 9 crashes on compilation
by Andrey Semashev 16 Nov '09

16 Nov '09

Hi, I'm building the release branch on MSVC 9 + STLPort 5.1.5. The compiler crashes when compiling Boost.Serialization (more precisely, the xml_wgrammar.cpp file). The command line I use is as follows: bjam.exe -j 2 --toolset=msvc variant=release link=shared threading=multi runtime-link=shared optimization=speed inlining=full stdlib=stlport --without-mpi --without-wave --without-python --without-graph stage Does anyone else have these problems?

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Strict or lax build configuration
by Vladimir Prus 16 Nov '09

16 Nov '09

I have a question how building Boost should behave when the user provides wrong configuration information. E.g., suppose you have this in user-config.jam: using python : 3.20 : /nowhere ; or alternatively, in 1.42 a user runs Boost.Build as follows: ./bjam -sZLIB_INCLUDES=/still-nowhere ... What should happen? - A hard error. After all, the user wanted that specific configuration. And warnings are easy to miss. - A warning. Autodetection will still run and possibly find a random version - A hard error, but also run autodetection and let user know what was found. For example: Could not find Python version 3.20 in /nowhere. There is a valid installation of 2.5 in /usr. Remove the 'using python' statement to use it. Comments? Thanks, Volodya

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[interprocess] compilation errors when BOOST_USE_WINDOWS_H is defined
by Hartmut Kaiser 16 Nov '09

16 Nov '09

If all I have is #define BOOST_USE_WINDOWS_H #include <boost/interprocess/smart_ptr/shared_ptr.hpp> I'm getting a whole bunch of compilation errors related to undefined types like win32_find_data_t, interprocess_filetime, etc. Anything I could do about this (Windows7, VS2005, VS2008, VS2010, Boost SVN trunk)? Regards Hartmut ------------------- Meet me at BoostCon http://boostcon.com

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[exception][mpl] Boost.Exception uses unqualified size_t
by Hartmut Kaiser 16 Nov '09

16 Nov '09

The Boost.Exception library uses size_t without any qualification, which leads to unexpected ADL problems related to mpl::size_t. I'm currently not able to provide a minimal use case as I don't fully understand where this happens, but if I replace size_t with std::size_t in boost/exception/detail/object_hex_dump.hpp my problems go away. I tried to look around in other Boost libraries, but all other occurrences of size_t are qualified as std::size_t. Regards Hartmut ------------------- Meet me at BoostCon http://boostcon.com

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[GGL] Some bits missing from Doxygen docs?
by Phil Endecott 15 Nov '09

15 Nov '09

Dear All, In the GGL docs at http://geometrylibrary.geodan.nl/formal%5Freview/ , if I go: Modules -> geometries -> ggl::linear_ring -> List of all members I see a page that says "This is the complete list of members for ggl::linear_ring< P, V, ClockWise, A >, including all inherited members.", and is then entirely empty. Is this what other people see? Maybe it is something odd with my browser. Thanks, Phil.

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[1.41.0] Release candidates available
by Beman Dawes 15 Nov '09

15 Nov '09

1.41.0 release candidates are available: http://boost.cowic.de/rc/boost_1_41_1_beta1.tar.bz2 - Unix line endings http://boost.cowic.de/rc/boost_1_41_1_beta1.tar.gz - Unix line endings http://boost.cowic.de/rc/boost_1_41_1_beta1.7z - Windows line endings http://boost.cowic.de/rc/boost_1_41_1_beta1.zip - Windows line endings Before pushing the release out to SourceForge, I'd appreciate it if several people would try the release candidate and report success, failure, or any problems encountered. Thanks, --Beman

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[asio] multicore performance
by Isidor Zeuner 15 Nov '09

15 Nov '09

After coming along this ([1]) interesting link, I wonder what the suggested way of building a fully multicore-capable boost::asio tcp server on the linux platform would be. An obvious solution would be to listen on one interface/port per core and solve the problem at the application layer, but I'm looking for a fully transparent solution. I haven't looked more deeply into the boost::asio inner workings. Is it feasible to have modify epoll_reactor to distribute the file descriptors among multiple epoll threads? Best regards, Isidor Zeuner [1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1234750/c-socket-server-unable-to-satura…

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[Review] GGL review extended until November 22nd
by Hartmut Kaiser 15 Nov '09

15 Nov '09

Hi all, The discussions around GGL are just start ramping up and we received only 2 (voting) reviews so far. Additionally, several people have been asking me off-list to extend the review period as they otherwise wouldn't be able to write a review in time. For these reasons the review period for the GGL library will be extended for another week. The review period will now end November 22nd. For everybody considering to vote: this would be a good time to write a review! Regards Hartmut GGL Review Manager ------------------- Meet me at BoostCon http://boostcon.com

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[GGL] Initial thoughts; how to register point types
by Phil Endecott 15 Nov '09

15 Nov '09

Dear All, Following is some initial feedback on GGL, after spending an hour or so with the docs. I hope to be able to complete a proper review over the next couple of days. The documentation seems very much focused on "how it works", which is of course useful for reviewing the design, but more "what it does" and "how to use it" content would help me to actually try it with some examples. For example, I have a Point<T> class and I would like to "teach" the library about it. From the "Design rationale" page I can see that a number of traits have to be defined, but I don't see a concise reference to what I need to do. Looking at the example "c01_custom_point_example.cpp" I see that there are some macros e.g. GEOMETRY_REGISTER_POINT_2D (not a Boost-style macro name by the way) but I don't see any documentation for what these do. I guess that it defines some traits specialisations, right? Does anyone know how to get Doxygen to create next/prev buttons for navigating between the pages in the e.g. "related pages" section? Is it possible to note which versions of the Boost library dependencies are needed? I'm not convinced that overloading e.g. distance() so that it works with all combinations of geometries is a good idea. If I wanted to know the distance from a point to a polygon I'd be happy to write distance_pt_to_poly(a,b). Having the overload makes it possible for me to accidentally pass the wrong things and get no error. And there is the question of what is meant by distance "to" a polygon - is it to the nearest point, or the centroid, etc? I believe that heterogeneous co-ordinate types (e.g. latitude and longitude of one type and altitude of another) are not supported, right? Regards, Phil.

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Re: [boost] [msm] Version 2.0 available
by Christophe Henry 14 Nov '09

14 Nov '09

> Thank you for the snappy reaction. Works lovely. Good news! > I hope you submit it for a formal review soon. Chances are that you > will wait for a review manager for a better part of the decade anyway. I have a review manager (David Abrahams) so we just need to negociate a date with the review wizards. It should definitely last not that long ;-)

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Re: [boost] [msm] Version 2.0 available
by Christophe Henry 14 Nov '09

14 Nov '09

> MSM 1.20 allowed writing a state machine with actions/guards which > modify some external state. <snip/> > I no longer instantiate the state machine directly and cannot pass > parameters to constructor and it seems that msm::back::state_machine > will not do this for me (after a quick glance at the definition it > seemed to me that msm::back::state_machine expects its template > parameter to be default constructible). > Is this wrong or am I missing something obvious? Is there some way I > could still achieve the old functionality? No you're not doing anything wrong, it's a use case I simply oversaw, so it's not your fault but mine ;-) So, I corrected the problem and : - added a templated constructor, with up to 5 arguments (can be changed with the BOOST_MSM_CONSTRUCTOR_ARG_SIZE define) - actualized the doc - thanked you for this in the acknowledgments You can download the change (in back/state machine.hpp) from the sandbox (http://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/sandbox/msm/) I tested your case and a few more so it should be ok now. Thanks a lot for the report. I'm happy you like the library. Regards, Christophe

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Re: [boost] [msm] Version 2.0 available
by Christophe Henry 14 Nov '09

14 Nov '09

>No, in this particular scenario I'd leave all the existing transitions in >place and just add the CDLoaded outer state. This is barely more work than >adding the flag, right? Ultimately, what I'm getting at is that your >justifying example in MsmSession_Handout.pdf could be better, because most >Statechart users wouldn't write the code you're implying they would. MSM vs. >Statechart aside, MSM users might be left with the question what flags are >good for when they can achieve the same with an additional outer state. >Again, flags are good, but the justifying example isn't. Ah now I think I now see what you mean. You're using direct entries and need therefore no change to the transitions. Point taken. I can change the example by adding another flag and giving it to one of the CDLoaded-states and one of the non-CDLoaded states, thus preventing the use of an outer state, eventhough it might make the example slightly more difficult than I intended. I really simply wanted to bring this new general concept. Regards, Christophe

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Detached threads and Futures
by ak1mbox-boost＠yahoo.ca 14 Nov '09

14 Nov '09

Hi, I wanted to judge people interest in the following feature and to see [hope :)] that maybe it is already scheduled to appear in the next thread library. I find it often useful to run blocking operations in a fully detached thread. These are often atomic IO operations which receive some input by copy and then if they succeed return some output or error if they fail. The functionality that I need can be described as follow: 1. Encapsulate some code, providing ability to send it any number of parameters 2. Receive notification when this code has finished doing whatever it was supposed to be doing and get the resulting output or error. 3. Be able to terminate all other threads without the fear of the detached thread causing a memory corruption. 4. [Optional] Indicate to the detached thread that it should try to interrupt its operation and exit but not really care if it can't at this point. With Anthony Williams Futures addition to the thread library implementing something like this should not be too difficult. Is this already in the works or would people be interested in someone taking this on as a standalone library and an addition to thread library? Thanks, Alex

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[mirror] C++0x version of the reflection library available
by Matus Chochlik 14 Nov '09

14 Nov '09

Dear list, I would like to announce that a new (alpha) version of the Mirror reflection library, re-written nearly completely from scratch in C++0x, is available at sourceforge.net for those interested, the code can be checked out from the SF repository: https://mirror-lib.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/mirror-lib/trunk/impl documentation pre-built with doxygen and DOT is available here: http://kifri.fri.uniza.sk/~chochlik/mirror-lib/html/ Based on a year and a half of user experience with the previous version (the one in Boost sandbox) there have been made several important changes. Just to mention a few: - The meta-objects should be more consistent with the base-level language - There is a run-time layer with an run-time interface very similar to the compile-time interface - Meta-object categories for tag dispatching have been added - "Local" names having parts of the nested name specifier stripped away if the Mirror's "using namespace" directive is used on the current (or parent) scope - C++0x features are extensively used to make things more straightforward - etc. This version does not yet implement all features from the previous version, like inherited class members, visitor-based traversals, meta-constructors and factory generators. These will be added in the near future. The library has been tested only with gcc (version 4.5.0 20091010) so I would be glad to hear about experiences with other compilers supporting C++0x. I would also appreciate any feedback, suggestions or other contributions. best regards, Matus

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[iostreams] 64bit compile issue
by Christoph 14 Nov '09

14 Nov '09

in boost/iostreams/detail/streambuf/indirect_streambuf.hpp:171: error: no matching function for call to 'max(int, std::streamsize&)' suggest fix: cast 2 to std::streamsize Best regards Christoph

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Halycon Days?
by Paul A. Bristow 14 Nov '09

14 Nov '09

http://tinyurl.com/yau3k57 see also youtube.com As Nom says - it is dead easy now there is a cable ;-) Paul --- Paul A. Bristow Prizet Farmhouse Kendal, UK LA8 8AB +44 1539 561830, mobile +44 7714330204 pbristow(a)hetp.u-net.com

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[Serialization] warnings and maybe a 'bug'
by Christoph Duelli 14 Nov '09

14 Nov '09

(I tried to file a ticket, but got cookie trouble. Therefore I post here. Sorry for the inconvenience.) i) warnings (unused parameter) (These warnings are with gcc, 4.2.1) boost/serialization/shared_ptr.hpp:116: warning: unused parameter 'file_version' boost/archive/shared_ptr_helper.hpp:110: warning: unused parameter 't' /boost/archive/detail/iserializer.hpp:474: warning: unused parameter 'ar' (and 't', same line) I also get lots of boost::archive::detail::<unnamed>::init_guid<XXXX>::g' defined but not used where XXXX is some class name of mine ii) maybe a 'bug' (code does no longer compile) Code that used to compile with Boost 1.40 does no longer compile with the 1.41 beta: (I had no time to investigate yet; in case it is obvious for you once you see the code I have decided to include this point in this posting): boost/archive/shared_ptr_helper.hpp:114: error: cannot convert 'const boost::serialization::extended_type_info_typeid<MEPfad>' to 'const boost::serialization::extended_type_info*' in return (where MEPfad is a class of mine) Best regards Christoph

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Beta build of PDF docs available for 1.41
by John Maddock 14 Nov '09

14 Nov '09

A beta build of the PDF documentation build for Boost-1.41 is available from the usual sourceforge page: https://sourceforge.net/project/admin/explorer.php?group_id=7586 in the Boost-docs/1.41.0 directory. Or directly from https://sourceforge.net/projects/boost/files/boost-docs/1.41.0/boost_pdf_1_…. If Boost authors would like to skim these for the usual SNAFU's that would be great. Otherwise I intend to release the final PDF build at the same time as Boost-1.41.0. Enjoy, John.

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[msm] Version 2.0 available
by Christophe Henry 14 Nov '09

14 Nov '09

Dear Boosters, I'm happy to announce the review-ready new version of Msm (2.0). Msm is a framework which enables you to build a Finite State Machine in a straightforward, descriptive and easy-to-use manner. The generated code is optimized for speed and will force you to use neither RTTI nor anything virtual. Msm supports most of UML state machine features: - state entry/exit - transition actions/guards - composite states - history - orthogonal regions - terminate states - deferred events - explicit entry/fork - entry/exit pseudostates - anonymous transitions - transition conflicts and much more. Msm v2.0 is a redesign of Msm v1.20 and offers a separation beetween front- and back-ends. There is currently one backend and several frontends: - the same frontend as Msm v1.20 - a variation of this frontend based on functors for actions - eUML, a boost::proto-based compile-time language allowing you to use UML notations directly inside your code, thus making writing code from a state machine diagram easier. eUML also comes in with a functional programming library similar to Boost.Phoenix, adapted to state machines. I'll be happy for any comment. You can find Msm v2.0 in: - the vault (http://www.boostpro.com/vault/index.php?directory=Msm) - the boost sandbox (http://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/sandbox/msm/) The documentation can be found at libs/msm/doc/index.htm and the code in the boost/msm subdirectory. The 1.0 and 1.10 are now retired. To close up the 1.x path, I'll bring a 1.21 with the latest bugfixes and then retire the 1.20 from the vault. Best regards, Christophe

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Boost bug sprint delayed until Wednesday, November 18th
by Marshall Clow 13 Nov '09

13 Nov '09

To allow time for the 1.41 release to complete, the start of the Boost Bug sprint has been delayed until next Wednesday, November 18th. That doesn't mean you can't work on bugs before that, though - just don't check fixes into svn until then. Find bugs, reproduce them, generate patches - all of those are fine! We started the last bug sprint with just over 800 open tickets. We finished with about 720 open tickets. Now (several months later) there are 854 open tickets. Useful reports: Active tickets https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/report/1 Ticket counts by milestone https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/report/21 Ticket counts by component https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/report/19 Ticket counts by type https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/report/20 Ticket counts by owner https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/report/18 With 1.41 about to go out the door, we've still got a _bunch_ of tickets that were "to be resolved" by earlier milestones: Boost 1.36.0 101 Boost 1.37.0 45 Boost 1.38.0 64 Boost 1.39.0 89 Boost 1.40.0 139 That's more than half the active tickets! I'm sure that some of these have been fixed, or no longer apply. But which ones? -- Marshall P.S. If you're going to be participating in the sprint, please drop me a note.

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