March 2010 - Boost - lists.preview.boost.org

[GSoC] Boost.Process
by Moncef Mechri 29 Mar '10

29 Mar '10

Hi boosters, My name is Moncef Mechri (aka "fireboot" on IRC). I'm a 20 years old french student in my final undergraduate year at the Faculté des Sciences de Luminy, Marseille, France. I would like to apply as a student for the Boost.Process SoC idea. My main domains of interest include C and C++ programming languages, system programming (especially on POSIX systems), parallel computing, generic programming, object-oriented design, software optimizations, graph theory, and UI development (using Qt). So far I've used a couple of boost librairies : Boost.Thread, Boost.Random, some features from Boost.Interprocess (principally atomic operations), Boost.SmartPointers, Boost.Foreach and Boost.Bind. They were all a pleasure to use and it's why I've just written a (french) paper about one of them : Boost.thread [1]. I'll would be glad to help improving the set of high quality libraries that Boost is. I have some ideas to help finishing Boost.Process and I'd be happy to hear your opinions about them: 1) Abstract the string type used to name executables. This could be done for example using a traits class 2) Move find_executable_in_path() and executable_to_progname() to Boost.Filesystem. I think their job is filesystem-related so maybe it would be wise to move them accordingly. 3) On POSIX systems, provide raise(3) and kill(3) functions to respectively send a signal to the current process and send a signal to a child. Sending signals to unrelated process should probably not take place in Boost.Process but rather in Boost.Interprocess 4) On POSIX systems, when a process dies it becomes a zombie process until wait() is called. Since wait() blocks, things may become tricky if there are a lot of child process. When a process die, the SIGCHLD signal is sent to his creator. It might be nice to use that by setting up a SIGCHLD signal handler which calls wait() when this signal is received. Since a similar problem exists on Windows, Boost.Process should provide a similar solution on this platform, but I've not yet thought about a possible design for it. It might be also useful to provide a way to activate/deactivate this feature, for example with a macro BOOST_MANAGES_DEAD_PROCESS 5) Right now, boost::process::wait_children() returns the first exit code which is not equal to EXIT_SUCCESS, and if there are more than one process which finished abnormally, return values of those child processes are ignored. I think we could improve that by returning for example a vector<boost::process::status> instead of just one boost::process::status. Doing that, we can retrieve all the status codes. It might be useful to define a way to toggle on/off 6) Actually in Boost.Process, if the developer wants to be able to do asynchronous operations on Windows he has to define the BOOST_PROCESS_WINDOWS_USE_NAMED_PIPE macro. By doing so, it makes Boost.Process on Windows create named pipe for all streams even if asynchronous operations are not used in all of them. First of all I propose to add a boost::process::anonymous_pipe class to Boost.Process, and a boost::process::named_pipe class to Boost.Interprocess (because named pipe can be used between unrelated process). After that the developer should be able to choose between anonymous pipe or named pipe on a per-stream basis (but of course asynchronous operations will only work on streams using named pipes). Thanks for reading, it'd be nice if someone accept to comment my ideas Moncef Mechri. [1] http://fz-corp.net/?p=505

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[Build] How to find a library (ICU)?
by Artyom 29 Mar '10

29 Mar '10

Hello, I'm trying to convert CMake build system for Boost.Locale to Boost.Build one. I have one obvious issue: how do find a library? How do I convert this CMake code to Boost.Build one: if(MSVC AND "${CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE}" STREQUAL "Debug") set(ICU_SUFFIX "d") endif() find_library(ICU_UC icuuc${ICU_SUFFIX}) find_library(ICU_DATA icudt NAMES icudata) find_library(ICU_I18N icuin${ICU_SUFFIX} NAMES icui18n${ICU_SUFFIX}) find_path(ICU_INCLUDE_DIR unicode/unistr.h) Note: I search for icuuc or icuucd under debug/msvc icuin or icui18n or icuind under debug/msvc icudata or icudt Also I need the build to fail or disable library if ICU not found. I've looked into the Jamfile of regex... but it does not look correctly for debug icu version when debug build is done! (And actually this is a bug). Also the code looks like a hack. Is there any specific way do to this? Thanks, Artyom

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boost GSoC XML
by Qingli Ma 29 Mar '10

29 Mar '10

Hi ! I have studied some XML parses both in C++ and Java. After comparing with each other, I think that the API interface are more or less the same, however the performance and the complexity of programming is different. So I think mine is to improve the performance and make XML related programming easier. I decide that I am going to make a backend that supports the Reader and the dom interface. I've asked advice from my teachers and he think I am capable of such a job. Thank you!

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New Boost.XInt Library, request preliminary review
by Chad Nelson 28 Mar '10

28 Mar '10

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi! I'm a long-time user (and admirer) of the Boost libraries, and I've just uploaded a new one to the Boost Vault for consideration: the Extended Integer (XInt) library, a unlimited-precision integer library that I've been working on for the last few months. I'd like to request a preliminary review of it, please. I know I was supposed to "determine interest" first, but I've seen posts going back at least five years, expressing a desire for such a library, so I didn't think that was really necessary in this case. :-) It's not perfect. The code is complete, as is the documentation text. But it doesn't yet support auto-linking or Windows DLLs, I'm not sure how the test suite would fit into the Boost test system, and I'm not sure I've got the Jamfile correct. But it should be sufficient for experimental use and review, and I'm eager to hear what you guys think of it. (I'm writing this in the wee hours of March 26th, I hope it isn't held in the moderation queue for too long.) - -- Chad Nelson Oak Circle Software, Inc. * * * -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAkusSQoACgkQp9x9jeZ9/wSwrACfTvCVl6bEZbiTSzZ16WnB1E6B cusAoO8eBd2Ne3cYcpdVmjUoUwFmjlVU =5Ptl -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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[GSoC] Boost.XML
by Ilie Halip 28 Mar '10

28 Mar '10

Hi! My name is Ilie Halip, and I'm a student at the Faculty of Computer Science in Iasi, Romania. I'm really interested in this year's Summer of Code, and stumbled upon your list of ideas yesterday. I have a few questions about the Boost.XML project. First, what actually needs to be done? The project proposal isn't clear about that. If it's about parsing using DOM/SAX, using XPath queries, then the project linked from the page already does that, right? So the project would involve working with the existing sources and adding validation, tests etc (as mentioned in the README)? How much working knowledge should a student have before trying to work on such a project? I must admit I haven't used Boost, nor libxml2 in the past, so I guess I should start reading documentation about both. I am good in C++, and I've been working with XML APIs for years, so that's not a problem. But the other two (Boost+libxml2) are? Is there a coding style I should follow if I were to work for this project to conform to Boost standards? Where can I find such info? Do you have any requirements from students working with GSoC? Something like: weekly reports, blogging about their experience, maintaining a wiki page about the status of the project? And last but not least... I'm actually employed right now, but my superiors are willing to give me more than 3 months of time off to be able to work for GSoC. Is that ok? Should I ask for more? I was looking over the timeline, and thought about getting a vacation between May 15th and August 30th. Would that be enough? Is it also alright if I stop working on the project for about a week in early June? Because I have a few exams then. Regards, Ilie. P.S. You can usually find me on IRC too (nickname: ihalip).

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[bgl] Manual include necessary for is_in_subset predicate
by Matthias Walter 28 Mar '10

28 Mar '10

Hi! I'm using a filtered_graph for a project, which filters edges via the is_in_subset predicate. Is it intended that one must manually include boost/graph/detail/set_adaptor.hpp for this to work? If I only include boost/graph/filtered_graph.hpp and want to use the predicate, the compiler complains about missing set_contains function. I didn't find anything about manual includes in the docs, but maybe there are reasons for it. best regards Matthias Walter

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[geometry] Inclusion in the next release?
by Romain CHANU 28 Mar '10

28 Mar '10

Hi boosters, Does anyone know if the Boost Geometry Library is going to be shipped in the next release of Boost? Cheers, Romain

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GSoC 2010 : BigInt
by Mario Ynocente Castro 28 Mar '10

28 Mar '10

Hi, I'm a engineering student from Peru. I'm really interested in the BigInt project for GSoC 2010, but there's a part for which I would like a better explanation, the description says : "A successful proposal will include a discussion of licensing concerns". What does it mean? I must choose the license under which the code will be released and indicate it when I submit the aplication? -- Mario Ynocente Castro 20074016B FIIS - UNI

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About Boost XML
by Qingli Ma 28 Mar '10

28 Mar '10

Hi! My idea about XML is listed below: 1.I have experience on processing larege scale xml files(database files).So I feel having boost proccess large xml files in SAX model will be useful and I've make that in Java before. 2.Reading spec about all kinds of XML APIs, and improve current Boost interfaces in Boost to support all kinds of processing without thinking about the backend implemention.By this, interfaces is independent from the backend, thus dynamic backend bindings is possible. 3.Maybe we need a new backend that serves for the API interface,like libxml2.It can parse,tranverse,writer and search(XPath) the document. 4.I am graduating this summer and I'll have enough time. Have you any sugguestions for me?

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[GSoC 2010] Sweepline algorithm
by Marcin Fatyga 28 Mar '10

28 Mar '10

Hello, My name is Marcin Fatyga and I am doing double degree program in computer science and mathematics on Warsaw University. I would like to participate in GSoC 2010 - I would like to implement the sweepline algorithm and use it to solve the problems related to it. In my project I would like to implement the sweepline and then use Fortune's Algorithm to solve the Voronoi Diagram's problem. Then I would provide some modifications to solve the two remaining connected problems : Delanuay triangulation and medial axis. All of these problems have many applications in differnet fields of science and solving them could be useful to may users. Though I don't have quite much experience with the boost library itself, I am particularly interested in algorithms and have some experience with both C++ and generic programming. Though there is no geometry library in current release, I can see it is in development phase. Should the project be integrated with it/use it? Best wishes Marcin Fatyga

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