September 2023 - Boost - lists.preview.boost.org

Linking Problems starting with Boost 1.81
by Dennis Luehring 05 Nov '23

05 Nov '23

1.79 links with my software 1.80 links with my software 1.81 does not link 1.82 does not link 1.83 does not link Linux up to date Suse/Tumbleweed gcc 13.2.1 ./bootstrap.sh ./b2 -j16 --toolset=gcc cxxflags=-fPIC --build-dir=./_build address-model=64 architecture=x86 threading=multi --stagedir=./lib64-gcc --build-type=complete --layout=versioned --without-mpi these are the errors on linking when using 1.81 and above ld.lld: error: duplicate symbol: boost::phoenix::placeholders::uarg1 >>> defined at local_256.hpp:16 (/home/linux/dev/3rdparty-linux-gcc/boost_1_83_0/boost/preprocessor/iteration/detail/limits/local_256.hpp:16) >>> Recipe_expression_validator.cpp.o:(boost::phoenix::placeholders::uarg1) in archive ../../implementation/expression_validation/libexpression_validation.a >>> defined at local_256.hpp:16 (/home/linux/dev/3rdparty-linux-gcc/boost_1_83_0/boost/preprocessor/iteration/detail/limits/local_256.hpp:16) >>> parser.cpp.o:(.bss+0xF80) in archive ../../devs/expression_parser_lib/libexpression_parser_lib.a ld.lld: error: duplicate symbol: boost::phoenix::placeholders::uarg2 >>> defined at local_256.hpp:19 (/home/linux/dev/3rdparty-linux-gcc/boost_1_83_0/boost/preprocessor/iteration/detail/limits/local_256.hpp:19) >>> Recipe_expression_validator.cpp.o:(boost::phoenix::placeholders::uarg2) in archive ../../implementation/expression_validation/libexpression_validation.a >>> defined at local_256.hpp:19 (/home/linux/dev/3rdparty-linux-gcc/boost_1_83_0/boost/preprocessor/iteration/detail/limits/local_256.hpp:19) >>> parser.cpp.o:(.bss+0xFC0) in archive ../../devs/expression_parser_lib/libexpression_parser_lib.a ld.lld: error: duplicate symbol: boost::phoenix::placeholders::uarg3 >>> defined at local_256.hpp:22 (/home/linux/dev/3rdparty-linux-gcc/boost_1_83_0/boost/preprocessor/iteration/detail/limits/local_256.hpp:22) >>> Recipe_expression_validator.cpp.o:(boost::phoenix::placeholders::uarg3) in archive ../../implementation/expression_validation/libexpression_validation.a >>> defined at local_256.hpp:22 (/home/linux/dev/3rdparty-linux-gcc/boost_1_83_0/boost/preprocessor/iteration/detail/limits/local_256.hpp:22) >>> parser.cpp.o:(.bss+0x1000) in archive ../../devs/expression_parser_lib/libexpression_parser_lib.a anyone got an idea what changed between 1.80 and 1.81 to let my linking fail with the above errors the expression_parser_lib and expression_validation is my own code

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[scope] Looking for endorsements and review manager
by Andrey Semashev 31 Oct '23

31 Oct '23

Hi, This is a reminder that Boost.Scope is looking for endorsements and a review manager. Following is an excerpt from the previous announcement, describing the library. Boost.Scope is a small library implementing utilities defined in <experimental/scope> from C++ Extensions for Library Fundamentals v3 with a few extensions. Namely, the library contains: * A number of scope guards for various use cases. * A unique resource wrapper that automatically frees the resource on destruction. * Utilities for wrapping POSIX-like file descriptors in the unique resource wrapper. Compared to <experimental/scope>, some notable extensions are: * A new scope_final scope guard, which is a more lightweight alternative to scope_exit. It is accompanied with the BOOST_SCOPE_FINAL macro that allows to simplify scope guard declaration syntax. * Scope guards can be activated/deactivated multiple times. * Scope guards can be created inactive initially. * Scope guard factory functions, for compatibility with C++11. * Support for optional resource traits in unique_resource wrapper, which improves usage with resources having unallocated values. * unique_resource supports swapping. * unique_resource supports dereferencing for any resource types that support dereferencing, not only pointers. * More flexible constructors for unique_resource. The library requires C++11 at the minimum and will significantly benefit from C++17. Source: https://github.com/Lastique/scope Docs: https://lastique.github.io/scope/libs/scope/doc/html/index.html The library is tested in CI and used in production in one of my projects. Thanks.

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Library proposal - indexed_array
by Julien Blanc 12 Oct '23

12 Oct '23

Hi, I've written and released a (rather small) library which allows defining arrays with arbitrary index mechanisms (hence the name, indexed_array). This especially allows indexing with scoped enums, use non zero-starting indexes, or use sparse indexes. This is not a view, but an array in the sense that it owns the data, and provides the same guarantees and functionalities as std::array, such as triviality propagation, being able to reside in read-only program sections, etc. It also supports multidimensional indexing, and provides an indexed_span template class to access lower dimension content (which can be used outside indexed_array). Finally, it provides an opt-in safer way to initialize the array content, which is especially useful when using complex and/or changing indexing schemes (like based on externally generated files). The library is available here: https://github.com/Julien-Blanc-tgcm/indexed_array And the doc is here: https://julien-blanc-tgcm.github.io/indexed_array/ It requires C++17 and mp11, and has first-class support for describe-d enums. If there is some interest, i'd like to propose it for inclusion in boost. So i'm looking for people who would endorse it. Thanks and best regards, Julien

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Windows Regression Runners - Failing on Develop
by Tom Kent 02 Oct '23

02 Oct '23

Starting sometime between 3am and 5pm on September 11, 2023, all the windows regression runners started failing on the develop branch. Master branch runners on the same VM are still doing fine ( https://www.boost.org/development/tests/master/developer/summary.html). The output doesn't have anything jump out at me. Nor were there any commits to the develop branch in that window that seem suspicious to me. The regression run output ends with: ...found 1 target... # Searching for "process_jam_log.exe" in "C:\teeks99-09\run\boost_regression\stage\bin"... Traceback (most recent call last): File "run.py", line 71, in <module> runner(root) File "C:\teeks99-09\run\boost_regression_src\regression.py", line 286, in __init__ self.main() File "C:\teeks99-09\run\boost_regression_src\regression.py", line 623, in main getattr(self,action_m)() File "C:\teeks99-09\run\boost_regression_src\regression.py", line 580, in command_regression self.command_setup() File "C:\teeks99-09\run\boost_regression_src\regression.py", line 351, in command_setup self.build_if_needed(self.process_jam_log,self.pjl_toolset) File "C:\teeks99-09\run\boost_regression_src\regression.py", line 714, in build_if_needed tool[ 'build_path' ] = self.tool_path( tool ) File "C:\teeks99-09\run\boost_regression_src\regression.py", line 739, in tool_path , '\n'.join( [ name_or_spec[ 'path' ], build_dir ] ) Exception: Cannot find "process_jam_log.exe" in any of the following locations: C:\teeks99-09\run\boost_regression\stage\bin\process_jam_log.exe C:\teeks99-09\run\boost_regression\stage\bin With the full output available here: https://gist.github.com/teeks99/bb4230f6a1efdd7af11bd93341c950bf Any ideas on this would be much appreciated.

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[boost.async] Andrzej's review
by Andrzej Krzemienski 01 Oct '23

01 Oct '23

Hi Everyone, I would like to thank Klemens for writing and sharing the Async library. It is something the community needs, and it is clear that a lot of thought and effort was put in it. I am not an expert on C++ coroutines or coroutines in general. I have played with a few echo-server examples in the past from Boost.ASIO, and created some toy examples of C++ coroutines. I devoted something like twelve evenings studying the Boost.Async: reading docs, testing toy examples (Windows 11, MSVC 2022), debugging and asking Klemens a lot of questions. Still, I cannot say I understand the library well enough to be able to responsibly give a recommendation. But I can still share my observations. On the design. Although my knowledge is superficial, I will risk a claim that the synchronization mechanisms and supporting features (`with`, channels, work_group) are the strong part of the design. (I disagree with the overload set for `select`, but I guess this is a non-design bug.) Regarding the choice and design of "coroutine types", I have certain reservations. It is still not clear to me why we have two -- promise and task -- and when I should use which. The docs give some answer: promise is eager, task can be awaited/spawned on another executor than it was created on. But is that it? I sense that there is a good reason to have them as two types, a better/clearer one than this described in the docs.But I fail to see it, and the docs do not explain it clearly enough, I think. I am uneasy about the design for `generator`. I filed a couple of issues: https://github.com/klemens-morgenstern/async/issues/101 https://github.com/klemens-morgenstern/async/issues/70 One problem is how the `generator` signals that it has finished. In all the examples it has to create a dummy value. I hear from Klemens that it is a necessity imposed by the coroutine design in C++. I do not feel competent to confirm it or not. But I note that std::generator does not require the user to `co_return` anything. And that asio::experimental::coro does allow the user to specify that they do not want to co_return even if they co_yield things. Regarding the value-returning generators, I have even more reservations. As noted in one of the quoted GitHub issues, the fact that it has a different interface than the normal generator, and that it has to be lazy to be usable, It looks to me like it qualifies for a separate coroutine type. On the documentation. The only other library offering coroutine support and any documentation that I know of is Boost.ASIO. In comparison to Boost.ASIO, Boost.Async has a waaay better documentation. It is big (in a positive sense), it has a lot of tutorial materials, lots of ideas explained, it is still being improved. It is waaay above the average quality of a library documentation that you can find on the web. But still I would greatly appreciate an even better one, however arrogant that seems. My reasoning is that for the next couple of years people who will consider Boost.Async will not only be unfamiliar with the library but also with C++ coroutines in general. They will need additional extra help to be able to use the library responsibly. To be more specific, I would expect more full compiling examples (those in folder examples) that illustrate different aspects of the library. For instance: * A convincing example of value-returning generator * timeout implemented in terms of `async::select`. I would expect a more detailed explanation of concepts used in this library: * interruption and cancellation, and how they differ, and when/if I should care about them. * being detaching and being detached, and how it is different from spawning. I got a response in one of GitHub issues that, "Interrupt is [...] meant to make select work lossless. What gets detached is the co_await itself, not the awaited thing." I feel the documentation should explain it more cleanly, and perhaps introduce some more well defined terms. The library does not cleanly communicate preconditions on the operations. I think it sometimes decides to throw an exception when a precondition is more appropriate. In other places it is silent about the corner cases. It also does not specify clearly what is guaranteed of the provided operations. Klemens correctly points out that postconditions are tricky in the case of asynchronous operations, but (1) some things in the library are not asynchronous and (2) this library (like any other) does offer some guarantees, if not on individual function calls, then for the entire expressions. For instance `co_await select(aw1, aw2)` does provide a guarantee that the result of one of the awaitables will be returned and the others will be interrupted. It should be specified in the synopsis of `select`. On the implementation. It is mostly magic to me, so I do not have much to say. There are a lot of awaitable types created whose existence I could not predict from studying the docs. I cannot say if this is a deficiency of the documentation, or is this how the C++ coroutines work: you might need a lot of awaitables that are implementation details. I find the design of the overload set of functions `select` bad and generic-programming-unfriendly. I explained it in detail in: https://github.com/klemens-morgenstern/async/issues/103 Functions that do slightly different things should have different names. Returning different types for special cases breaks generic code, and causes surprises, sometimes runtime surprises. Also, because the overload for value-returning promises returns a variant, I have run into an interesting situation when trying to add a timeout support to the echo server example. I get the following statement: ``` variant2::variant<variant2::monostate, tcp_socket> ans = co_await async::select( timer.async_wait(async::use_op), acceptor.async_accept() ); ``` And now I have a variant to unpack inside a coroutine. Normally, the recommended way to unpack a variant is to use a visitor: ``` struct visitor { void operator()(tcp_socket&& sock) { co_yield std::move(sock); // ERROR } void operator()(variant2::monostate&&) { } }; visit(visitor{}, std::move(ans)); ``` But this doesn't work, because now I am co_yield-ing from a non-coroutine. And I have to resort to manually inspecting the variant, which is taught to be error prone. I guess this is the right choice to use variant for the return type of `select`, and that it is the limitation of variant, until C++ gets pattern matching. But still, it would be helpful if the documentation (or examples) illustrated what potential difficulties the user can expect. Should the library be accepted to Boost? Again, I am not competent enough in the domain of coroutines, to responsibly say that the library meets the bar, but because I think the community desperately needs this kind of library with Boost-quality docs and support, I will risk saying that Boost.async should be conditionally accepted. The conditions being: * Address the design of generators (either change it or provide a clearer rationale) * Improve the docs - clearly describe the notions of interrupting, canceling, detaching, spawning. - provide a more detailed synopses for functions and classes with preconditions, described effects, and the guarantees. I filed this as a list of issues in the GitHub: https://github.com/klemens-morgenstern/async/issues/120 https://github.com/klemens-morgenstern/async/issues/119 https://github.com/klemens-morgenstern/async/issues/117 https://github.com/klemens-morgenstern/async/issues/115 https://github.com/klemens-morgenstern/async/issues/114 https://github.com/klemens-morgenstern/async/issues/103 https://github.com/klemens-morgenstern/async/issues/101 https://github.com/klemens-morgenstern/async/issues/100 https://github.com/klemens-morgenstern/async/issues/70 https://github.com/klemens-morgenstern/async/issues/64 Finally, while the above might look like a list of complaints, I really appreciate the work that was done in order to provide this library, and the solutions that were applied (like the clever use of await_transform). I learned a lot from studying this library, and my intuition tells me that it will end up being a great addition to Boost. I also appreciate the responsiveness of the author. Klemens has been answering a lot of my questions in a timely fashion, and improving the docs based on feedback. Thanks! Regards, &rzej;

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[Async] Second attempt at review of proposed Boost.Async begins
by Niall Douglas 01 Oct '23

01 Oct '23

Dear Boost, Due to too few reviews last time, we are going to try again the review of this library. This review shall run between Friday 22nd September and Monday 2nd October. Please do consider contributing a review! My thanks to Marcelo Zimbres Silva for the only formal review last time, and to the others including those on Reddit /r/cpp and by private email who submitted feedback. All your reviews and feedback have been retained and will be reused for this review. To remind you all, Boost.Async is a C++ coroutine programming library based around Boost.ASIO as the executor, with a unique set of properties which make it incomparable to most existing C++ coroutine programming libraries. To be specific, it lets you compose arbitrary third party awaitables without any additional effort, which lets you tie together third party libraries with ease and convenience. Changes to proposed Boost.Async since the last review: 1. Major doc improvements & bug fixes 2. PMR is optional 3. optimized associated allocator for use_op 4. lazy generator support 5. public unique_handle & more examples with custom awaitables 6. as_result/as_tuple support (akin to the asio stuff, but takes an awaitables, i.e. co_await as_result(foo())) - reduces unnecessary exceptions. 7. with supports return values. You can read the documentation at https://klemens.dev/async/ and study or try out the code at https://github.com/klemens-morgenstern/async. Anyone with experience using C++ coroutines is welcome to contribute a review at the Boost mailing list (https://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost), at /r/cpp on Reddit, via email to me personally, or any other mechanism where I the review manager will see it. In your review please state at the end whether you recommend acceptance, acceptance with conditions, or rejection. Please state your experience with C++ coroutines and ASIO in your review, and how many hours you spent on the review. Thanks in advance for your time and reviews! Niall

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boost::any_cast gives build errors with VS2022, boost v1.82 and C++17
by Bhuyan, Jyotideep 01 Oct '23

01 Oct '23

Hi, I was using VS2019, boost v1.78, and C++14 version and the below code was working well. Same code gives build error with VS2022, boost v1.82, and C++17 due to "o << *boost::any_cast<T>(&a); " Instruction. I wanted to know why it behaves differently. Code : class any_out { struct streamer { virtual void print(std::ostream& o, const boost::any& a) = 0; virtual streamer* clone() = 0; virtual ~streamer() {} }; public: any_out() : m_streamer(nullptr) { } ~any_out() { delete m_streamer; } template <typename T> any_out(const T& value) : m_streamer(new streamer_imp<T>), m_object(value) { } any_out(const any_out& a) : m_streamer(a.m_streamer ? a.m_streamer->clone() : nullptr), m_object(a.m_object) { } template <typename T> any_out& operator=(const T& r) { any_out(r).swap(*this); return *this; } any_out& operator=(const any_out& r) { any_out(r).swap(*this); return *this; } any_out& swap(any_out& r) noexcept { std::swap(m_streamer, r.m_streamer); std::swap(m_object, r.m_object); return *this; } friend std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream& o, const any_out& a) { if(a.m_streamer) { a.m_streamer->print(o, a.m_object); } return o; } boost::any& get() { return m_object; } const boost::any get()const { return m_object; } bool empty() const { return m_object.empty(); } private: template <typename T> struct streamer_imp : public streamer { virtual void print(std::ostream& o, const boost::any& a) { try { if (a.empty()) { o << "<empty>"; } else { o << *boost::any_cast<T>(&a); } } } virtual streamer* clone() { return new streamer_imp<T>(); } }; // Members streamer* m_streamer; boost::any m_object; }; I have migrated to VS2022, boost v1.82, and C++17, and due to a build error, I have changed the code below. virtual void print(std::ostream& o, const boost::any& a) { try { if (a.empty()) { o << "<empty>"; } else { o << boost::any_cast<T*>(a); } } } any_out anyTest; anyTest = 100; std::string actualStr; actualStr = make_string() << anyTest; actualStr prints nullptr (0000000) instated of value 100 for VS2022, boost v1.82 and C++17 Best Regards, Jyotideep (JD) Please be advised that this email may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify us by email by replying to the sender and delete this message. The sender disclaims that the content of this email constitutes an offer to enter into, or the acceptance of, any agreement; provided that the foregoing does not invalidate the binding effect of any digital or other electronic reproduction of a manual signature that is included in any attachment. Confidential - Company Proprietary

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[Async] Reminder that peer review ends on Monday
by Niall Douglas 29 Sep '23

29 Sep '23

A reminder to Boost folk that the proposed Boost.Async review ends on Monday 2nd October. I have received no new reviews since this second review began. You can read the documentation at https://klemens.dev/async/ and study or try out the code at https://github.com/klemens-morgenstern/async. Niall

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Re: [boost] Fwd: [boost.async] Andrzej's review
by Niall Douglas 29 Sep '23

29 Sep '23

Andrzej, Firstly, it's weird I don't see this on the Boost mailing list. In fact, I seem to only get about half the mail to the Boost mailing list ever since they fiddled with the servers. So thanks for sending this review to me directly. I've also caught up with all your other posts on Boost.Async from https://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2023/09/index.php, none of which I had seen before now. Thanks for the review. If you don't mind if I jump in with a few bits myself which are intentionally not about the review itself ... On 29/09/2023 14:08, Andrzej Krzemienski wrote: > Regarding the choice and design of "coroutine types", I have certain > reservations. > It is still not clear to me why we have two -- promise and task -- and > when I should use which. The docs give some answer: promise is > eager, task can be awaited/spawned on another executor than it was > created on. But is that it? I sense that there is a good reason to have > them as two types, a better/clearer one than this described in the > docs.But I fail to see it, and the docs do not explain it clearly > enough, I think. Outcome calls the same thing eager and lazy. I felt lazy is a more descriptive name than task. I mean, why should a task be lazy rather than eager? The reason is simply because Lewis Baker happened to choose that default, and it's stuck since, but there isn't any strong rational for "task ~= lazy" other than convention. > One problem is how the `generator` signals that it has finished. In all > the examples it has to create a dummy value. I hear from Klemens that it > is a necessity imposed by the coroutine design in C++. I do not feel > competent to confirm it or not. But I note that std::generator does not > require the user to `co_return` anything. And that > asio::experimental::coro does allow the user to specify that they do not > want to co_return even if they co_yield things. It's been a while since I used coroutine generators, but my memory is when the coroutine exits then the generator returns its end iterator value. I don't remember dummy values. But then I 99.9% use C++ coroutines with Result, to avoid ever throwing C++ exceptions through C++ coroutine machinery which *still* is riddled with showstopper bugs in current compilers. > On the documentation. The only other library offering coroutine support > and any documentation that I know of is Boost.ASIO. There are actually a good few Boost libraries with C++ coroutine support now in one form or other. Outcome is obviously one, but there is at least one other apart from ASIO (somebody else may remind me which one now). Boost.Async's are much fuller featured obviously, but even Outcome's simple ones are usually good enough for most use cases. You don't need to use them with Result either. > But this doesn't work, because now I am co_yield-ing from a > non-coroutine. And I have to resort to manually inspecting the variant, > which is taught to be error prone. BTW tip for the future: just use helper coroutine lambdas if you need to do coroutine stuff from within normal code. These normally don't work with the Coroutine support from cppcoro, stdexec, libunifex nor ASIOs because their coroutines don't allow it. But Boost.Async's does, as does Boost.Outcome's. It cannot be understated the usefulness of being able to dip in and out of "coroutine land" using inline lambdas from normal code. It makes C++ coroutines vastly more convenient to use. Niall

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[fiber] Moving fibers between threads
by Niall Douglas 28 Sep '23

28 Sep '23

Dear Boost, At work I need to move a Boost Fiber from one kernel thread to another. There is a dedicated documentation page for this: https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_83_0/libs/fiber/doc/html/fiber/migration.h… What that page doesn't say is how to migrate yourself if you're currently within a Fiber to another kernel thread, as the docs only talk about migrating Fibers currently not executing and in the ready not sleeping state. I guess this would work: 1. Create a new Fiber, and go into a loop giving up the current execution. 2. When that new Fiber executes, migrate the original fiber to its new kernel thread, then have it exit the loop so it proceeds. Then self immolate, as you're done. But now you're creating and destroying a whole Fiber just to migrate a Fiber between kernel threads, and that feels icky. I don't suppose there's a better way e.g. some sort of way of asking the current thread's Fiber scheduler to call a function when it's next not executing a Fiber? That would avoid the needless Fiber creation and destruction per migration of a Fiber across kernel threads. Thanks for help in advance. Niall

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[boost.async] Dummy co_return from a generator
by Andrzej Krzemienski 24 Sep '23

24 Sep '23

Hi Everyone. I am very uneasy about the dummy co_retuned value that I see in the examples of async::generator. Like the one in the echo server example: https://klemens.dev/async/tutorial.html#echo_server async::generator<tcp_socket> listen() { tcp_acceptor acceptor({co_await async::this_coro::executor}, {tcp::v4(), 55555}); for (;;) { tcp_socket sock = co_await acceptor.async_accept(); co_yield std::move(sock); } co_return tcp_socket{acceptor.get_executor()}; // :-( } The control will never get to the co_return. The caller never even tries to observe this value. and yet we are forced to return it. Interestingly, the coroutine example from ASIO doesn't have this due to a different design: https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_83_0/doc/html/boost_asio/example/cpp20/cor… std::generator doesn't have this. In other examples the degenerate value is used to indicate the end of generation. I do not know the coroutines to be able to tell if this is a design problem with async::generator or with C++ coroutines in general. But it feels wrong that the end of generation should be signaled in this way. Regards, &rzej;

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[boost.async] a note on documentation
by Andrzej Krzemienski 23 Sep '23

23 Sep '23

Hi Everyone, In the context of the Boost review of Boost.Async, I wanted to share a thought on documentation. I think the Reference section in the docs is insufficient. A lot of libraries in Boost have this approach that the reference section of the documentation is a specification exhaustive enough that it could be used to provide a number of competing implementations. Each function has a very detailed contract: what it returns and when, what are the preconditions, what exceptions are thrown upon failure, what are the postconditions. I am missing this from the reference of Boost.Async. Also, it may be one of the first libraries (that meet a certain bar of documentation) tied so much to coroutines, so I have no strict requirements on how a coroutine library is documented, but I think things like promise types should be explicitly referenced. Let's consider `async::generator`. It is not only class template `generator`, but also: 1. the specialization of type trait std::coroutine_traits 2. Class template `generator_promise` 3. generator_promise 4. generator_receiver 5. awaitable types Even though some of them belong to namespace `detail`, they provide guarantees relevant for the users. I do not think `generator_promise`is an implementation detail. I think it needs to be documented. This seems especially important when I start adding my awaitables to the mix. I wonder what others think about it? Regards, &rzej;

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Seeking Endorsement for Charconv
by Matt Borland 22 Sep '23

22 Sep '23

Hello, At the beginning of the summer I solicited feedback for an in-progress C++11 implementation of <charconv> for a proposal to Boost. The library is now complete with that feedback incorporated, and I am seeking endorsement. Should the library receive endorsement Chris Kormanyos has volunteered to serve as the review manager. What is Charconv? It is a character conversion library that converts a character sequence into a number (from_chars) or converts a number into a character sequence (to_chars). This is similar to strtod and printf with two key differences. First and most important is a roundtrip guarantee. That is a number converted into a character sequence, and then back into a number will be identical to the starting value. Second, you can easily specify an input/output format with a chars_format argument, and also provide a target precision. Lastly, instead of requiring recent compilers (e.g. GCC 11, and MSVC 19.24) and C++17 to get full support for <charconv> you can have it now with GCC 5, Clang 3.7, or MSVC 19.00 and C++11. What types are supported? All builtin integers plus __int128 and unsigned __int128. For floating point types all built-in IEEE 754 compliant types to include those provided in C++23’s <stdfloat>, and __float128. A notable example of a non-IEEE 754 compliant built-in type is ibm128 provided on older versions of PowerPC. How do I use the library? The repo can be found here: https://github.com/cppalliance/charconv. Since this is a compiled library, directions for use with b2, vcpkg, and conan are provided. What is the performance like? I added a table of benchmarks (https://master.charconv.cpp.al/#ref_benchmarks) that compares this implementation to the performance of: STL (printf, strtoX, and <charconv>), Boost.Lexical_Cast, Boost.Spirit, and libdouble-conversion. In summary we meet or exceed the performance of GCC and MSVC <charconv>, and exceed by up to several multiples the performance of all the other libraries. Thanks to Stephan T. Lavavej for providing his benchmarking file in the original discussion. Why is this not going into Boost.Compat? The size of this library exceeds the scope of Boost.Compat. Compat is designed for headers that can be implemented in a small amount of code. <latch> with implementation, testing and documentation was ~350 LOC while Charconv is ~29,500. Please let me know if you have any questions or issues with the library. Thanks, Matt Borland —- C++ Alliance Staff Engineer

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Async review scheduled for September 22, 2023 - October 2, 2023
by Mateusz Loskot 08 Sep '23

08 Sep '23

Hi, Following request from Nial and Klemens, we have scheduled new round of the Async review for September 22, 2023 - October 2, 2023 https://www.boost.org/community/review_schedule.html Best regards, -- Mateusz Loskot, on behalf of the Review Wizards

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Presenting BoostServerTech chat
by Ruben Perez 07 Sep '23

07 Sep '23

Hi all, I'm Ruben, the author of Boost.MySQL, and I want to present (and maybe get some feedback about) a project I'm developing to showcase how to do async stuff with Boost server-side. This started because I want to write a connection_pool class for MySQL. It's a complex feature with a lot of trade-offs, and I wish I had more field experience to guide me when making the required decisions. We currently have great libs for async networking (Asio, Beast, Redis, MySQL). They've got examples and docs, but I think they sometimes fall short. Often users get lost since setting up an async server is not trivial, and we offer a lot of flexibility that can sometimes stun newcomers. So I've decided to blend these two needs together and create a project that allows Boost authors to try new things in a realistic environment, while demonstrating to users how they can use Boost to build an app. (Note: this is **not** a Boost library, and will never be). Code: https://github.com/anarthal/servertech-chat/ Docs: https://anarthal.github.io/servertech-chat/ Live demo: http://13.48.215.34/ It's still a work-in-progress. Although I've implemented some features, I've tried to focus on the skeleton, getting testing, deployments and C++ best practices in place. I plan on adding more stuff in the future, like showing how you can call 3rd party REST APIs using Boost. One cool feature is that, if you have an AWS account, you can fork the repo and get a live server in minutes (see https://anarthal.github.io/servertech-chat/03-fork-modify-deploy.html). I actually envision this as a series of projects, showcasing different applications and needs. I originally wrote this document (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZQrod1crs8EaNLLqSYIRMacwR3Rv0hC5l-gfL-j…) describing how I saw it. If any other author wants to step forward and create their own ServerTech application, please let me know. I'd like to have some (hopefully constructive) feedback from you guys. I'd thank you if you give the live demo a try. And if someone's interested, there's a ton of work to do, so let me know. Note: if you've scanned through the code and you're asking "where is the connection_pool" - nowhere yet, that's still to come. Thanks, Ruben.

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Boost Solvers Library
by Pascal Kesseli 03 Sep '23

03 Sep '23

In the course of my research in static program analysis, I have been a contributor to the Bounded Model Checker for C (CBMC - https://github.com/diffblue/cbmc) for quite some time now. Projects like these map static analysis problems to a variety of back-end solvers like SAT, SMT, QBF, etc. What always surprised me is how often tools like CBMC have to come up with an intermediate C++ layer for the various back-end solvers like MiniSAT or Glucose (see https://github.com/diffblue/cbmc/tree/develop/src/solvers/sat). For this reason I am considering to create a unified C++ wrapper for these different solvers, with an initial focus on SAT. I intend to include a naive default DPLL implementation, but the real value for such a library would stem from making the aforementioned third party engines easily accessible. I was wondering whether this would be a fit for a Boost library, but I am uncertain whether: A) There is even interest in the community for this or B) The scope of the library with inherent dependencies on external SAT solvers fits the Boost format Thus I thought I'd drop this message in the mailing list to ask what people think. Thanks,

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