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[math][constants] mathematical constants page deserves to be more visible in the documentation
by Andrew Hundt 11 May '13

11 May '13

I believe the Boost.math toolkit mathematical constants are an extremely useful feature, yet it is extremely difficult to find. Every time I try to browse to it I try searching boost.org/libs, then try the math library page and cannot find the links at either of those locations. In fact, I'm not exactly sure how to browse to it and instead use saved bookmarks. I it would be worthwhile if there was some direct link or mention of it on boost.org/libs/math at minimum, and possibly even directly on boost.org/libs . Here is the mathematical constants page I am referring to: http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/release/libs/math/doc/sf_and_dist/html/math_t… Any thoughts on this idea? Cheers! Andrew Hundt

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Re: [boost] Live read-only GIT mirrors of Boost trunk SVN
by Niall Douglas 11 May '13

11 May '13

> on Mon May 06 2013, Niall Douglas <ndouglas-AT-blackberry.com> wrote: > > > My experience with SubGit has been very, very good. I would *strongly* > > recommend it over git2svn. > > Why, have you got a lot of experience with both tools? You'd recommend > SubGit for what job, exactly? Does it modularize? (answer: no). Git2svn is painful. I think anyone who has used it even trivially has found it so. SubGit can map structure arbitrarily, so SVN branches need not become GIT branches, they can become tags or any other kind of git ref. You can apply filters and map one (or more) SVN repo to multiple output GIT repos using those filters, so yes it does do limited modularization. Is that modularization support particularly powerful? Definitely not. With an automated script to generate a ton load of mappings it could approach the capability of KDE's tool, albeit with no range specific filtering available. But its specific purpose is a different use case: live two-way mapping. And for that you necessarily have to restrict the flexibility of output, because they have to map in reverse. > We didn't choose svn2git at random: we started using it because KDE (a > much bigger project than Boost) used it to solve the exact same problems > Boost has to solve: modularization + Git migration. Svn2git is a completely different tool to git2svn. Svn2git is a much superior tool, albeit rather harder to configure (correctly). > You'd have to have some pretty compelling arguments, a complete plan for > migration and modularization, and be prepared to lead the effort > yourself for me to throw out years of planning and coding to use a > different tool. Do you really think you're making a reasonable > suggestion? I'm sorry you have read my confusion that way Dave. I would have hoped that after all the years we have known one another you wouldn't have interpreted my comments in that way. Just to be clear and for the record, I have no compelling arguments, no plan for migration, and I am in no way criticizing your work, your leadership, nor suggesting the throwing away of any planning or coding. I apologise unreservedly if anything in my words appeared that way. I am absolutely sure that you have given this the very deepest of thought and I - as always actually - trust your judgment. I am simply confused. > > I think it would be quite easy to set up a live perfect Git mirror of all > > Boost SVN, > > "Perfect," really? I think you are grossly underestimating some of the > strange ways that the SVN filesystem has been used over Boost's history. > >From http://subgit.com/book/index.html#branches-mapping it's clear that > the SubGit tool isn't equipped to deal with them properly. For example, > there's no revision range limiting in the branch mapping, a feature of > svn2git that we actually *need* to use. Perfect for me means that HEAD and releases work perfectly. I personally feel little priority about perfect preservation of history. > > do a transition period where SVN is writeable but GIT read only, and > > then one day the switch is flipped and it goes the other way > > round. That way anyone dependent on SVN keeps on working, but without > > write access. > > Again, I think a two-way mirror could be a really nice addition to the > existing transition plan, if someone is willing to put in the elbow > grease to set it up. Are you volunteering? We can talk about this at C++ Now next week, but if we were to coordinate our efforts and I have definite approval and support from Boost SC, I have no objection to volunteering for this. There is also the matter that SubGit would probably need some money paid for it as a matter of good faith. I would emphasize that a successful two way mirror does impose substantial restrictions on the variety of modularization possible so long as the mirror is active. That probably is unacceptable to you given your apparent plans. Niall --- Opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily represent those of BlackBerry Inc.

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Re: [boost] Git Modularization Ready for Review
by Niall Douglas 11 May '13

11 May '13

> Niall Douglas <ndouglas(a)blackberry.com> writes: > > > Me personally I'd just chuck away any unmappable historical information. > > Chalk it up to a cost of transition. If they really need the history, > > they can go fetch it from the read-only SVN repo. > > I see you've not been keeping up with the list lately ;) Daniel et. al. > suggested doing just that a few months ago and was met with such a chorus of > criticism, they didn't really have a choice but to fix it. Never actually was on this list, not ever, until recently as it's a lot of extra reading. Been involved with Boost for over a decade though. > Personally, I agree with the chorus. After all, the point of a VCS is to have a > history of the code's evolution to a point. The VCS, be it SVN, Git, whatever, is > just a means to get that history. Jetissoning the ends for the means seems > misguided. No, it's a cost of doing an upgrade. Those of you who ever migrated a large CVS to SVN transition know what I mean: stuff gets lost, and actually it isn't important enough to preserve that it requires a quadrupling of transition effort when a read-only copy of the old technology repo is good enough. Distributed SCM is much more dimorphic again, and you *have* to accept some data loss. Let me put this another way: those who want no history loss ought to be the ones volunteering the additional time to preserve history. What actually happens sadly is then the argument becomes we must stick with whatever the old technology is, because people will choose a small reduction of productivity every day over fixing tooling once and for all ("programmers program, they don't do tooling"). I *still* find CVS in use in places because "history must never ever be lost", and given the anti-productivity nature of CVS that costs far more in present developer time than accepting a 5% or 10% history loss, most of which will never significantly matter anyway because it occurs on the edges where SCMs dimorph. > What happens in a few years time when Git is replaced with the next big thing? > Do we lose the history again? And then again when that gets replaced too? That's exactly what happens. Bitrot is always inevitable in the long run. Here call it "non-fatal bitrot" :) My only red line is corruption of past and present source code releases. It must *always* be possible to check out tag X and build release X. Other than that, I'm flexible, including loss of branch integrity, because in the end if that branch is really important its owner will manually fix up the damage. > > I fear that if modularization is taken to its logical extreme, you > > could see submodules get out of step with other submodules. You may of > > course have already anticipated this and have implemented something I > haven't realized. > > As I said, I am confused. > > Can you explain a bit more about what you mean by out-of-step? The whole > point of modularising the code is to *help* modules to get out-of-step and > therefore be easier to develop and test independent of what other Boost > libraries are doing. But perhaps you mean something else? Well, the Git way of helping stuff get out of step is that everyone gets their own full copy of the whole repo, and their copy is just as important as anyone else's copy. You clone, you develop and test, and optionally push changes elsewhere which could be your friend, your team, your employer, or of course some central authoritative copy. So I'm afraid I just don't get the present design for a library as small and as tightly integrated as Boost. Something huge and cleanly separated like KDE sure, but for Boost I suspect it's overkill. Unless Boost plans to grow 10x in the next three years that is. > > [1]: By findable I mean that when Boost library users do #include > > <boost/whatever> they get the main Boost repo version, not the > > submodule version. I absolutely would expect an automated tool to pull > > headers from submodules, check them for ABI breakage and push them > > into the main repo. My point is that some sanity check ought to be there. > > I'm not following why you would want to do this. Perhaps you can explain what > problem you are anticipating and how this would solve it? Most of Boost is implemented in headers, very much unlike KDE or most other C++ libraries. Moreover, those headers are quite brittle, unlike KDE or most other C++ libraries. If broken into submodules, I can see an apparently innocent change in submodule X appearing to compile and be okay in developer X's set of submodule clones, but silently be a breaking change with a simultaneous change in submodule Y by developer Y. Why this matters is because when in git you go to push, git will force you to merge before push and at that point you "see" the breakage by a conflict appearing (hopefully) and if not then your immediate next compile will fail. With the submodule approach that doesn't happen, so you *don't* see the breakage till much later when the regression tests suddenly start failing. I'm a great believer in refusing to let programmers commit code which breaks other code rather than nagging them later to fix an earlier commit. The point of failure notification ought to be as close to cause as possible. > I also don't get what 'findable' means. What would a non-findable header be? Any internal header only findable by internal implementation. What I'm basically suggesting is an approach where the master repo keeps a gold candidate set of headers automatically extracted regularly from the submodules. Then on push a hook can do appropriate black magic to force the pusher to merge headers before the push. Then stuff which is broken appears broken as soon as possible, rather than suddenly emerging many days later. Does this make sense? Niall --- Opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily represent those of BlackBerry Inc.

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Boost build broken on the trunk
by Edward Diener 11 May '13

11 May '13

After getting the latest Boost from the trunk, and after running bootstrap I try '.\b2 install --prefix=c:\programming\bin' and get: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Performing configuration checks - 32-bit : yes - arm : no - mips1 : no - power : no - sparc : no - x86 : yes - has_icu builds : no warning: Graph library does not contain MPI-based parallel components. note: to enable them, add "using mpi ;" to your user-config.jam - zlib : no - iconv (libc) : no - iconv (separate) : no - icu : no - icu (lib64) : no - message-compiler : yes - gcc visibility : no - long double support : yes warning: skipping optional Message Passing Interface (MPI) library. note: to enable MPI support, add "using mpi ;" to user-config.jam. note: to suppress this message, pass "--without-mpi" to bjam. note: otherwise, you can safely ignore this message. warning: No python installation configured and autoconfiguration note: failed. See http://www.boost.org/libs/python/doc/building.html note: for configuration instructions or pass --without-python to note: suppress this message and silently skip all Boost.Python targets - zlib : no (cached) C:/Programming/VersionControl/boost/tools/build/v2/build\virtual-target.jam:1099 : in virtual-target.register-actual-name from module virtual-target error: Duplicate name of actual target: <pc:\programming\bin\lib>libboost_date_t ime-vc110-mt-gd-1_54.lib error: previous virtual target { common%common.copy-libboost_date_time-vc110-mt- gd-1_54.lib.STATIC_LIB { msvc%msvc.archive-libboost_date_time-vc110-mt-gd-1_54.l ib.STATIC_LIB { msvc%msvc.compile.c++-gregorian\greg_month.obj.OBJ { gregorian/g reg_month.cpp.CPP } } { msvc%msvc.compile.c++-gregorian\greg_weekday.obj.OBJ { g regorian/greg_weekday.cpp.CPP } } { msvc%msvc.compile.c++-gregorian\date_generat ors.obj.OBJ { gregorian/date_generators.cpp.CPP } } } } error: created from ./install-proper-lib-static error: another virtual target { common%common.copy-libboost_date_time-vc110-mt-g d-1_54.lib.STATIC_LIB { msvc%msvc.archive-libboost_date_time-vc110-mt-gd-1_54.li b.STATIC_LIB { msvc%msvc.compile.c++-gregorian\greg_month.obj.OBJ { gregorian/gr eg_month.cpp.CPP } } { msvc%msvc.compile.c++-gregorian\greg_weekday.obj.OBJ { gr egorian/greg_weekday.cpp.CPP } } { msvc%msvc.compile.c++-gregorian\date_generato rs.obj.OBJ { gregorian/date_generators.cpp.CPP } } } } error: created from ./install-proper-lib-static error: added properties: <log-api>winnt error: removed properties: <log-api>generic C:/Programming/VersionControl/boost/tools/build/v2/build\virtual-target.jam:484: in actualize-no-scanner from module object(file-target)@4017 C:/Programming/VersionControl/boost/tools/build/v2/build\virtual-target.jam:134: in class(a)virtual-target.actualize from module object(file-target)@4017 C:/Programming/VersionControl/boost/tools/build/v2\build-system.jam:720: in load from module build-system C:\Programming\VersionControl\boost\tools\build\v2/kernel\modules.jam:289: in im port from module modules C:\Programming\VersionControl\boost\tools\build\v2/kernel/bootstrap.jam:139: in boost-build from module C:\Programming\VersionControl\boost\boost-build.jam:17: in module scope from module ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This is on Windows but the same thing occurs on my Linux distros. Cannot this be fixed ? I posted the same message for Linux failure on the Boost Build mailing list but received no response.

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[bootstrap/1.53] jam0.exe crashes when bootstrapping for VC2012 AMD64
by rjeczalik 11 May '13

11 May '13

Hi, I'm trying to build Boost 1.53 using VC2012 amd64 (toolset=msvc-11.0 address-model=64) and Windows Server 2012 Standard. Bootstrapping fails with jam0.exe crash - some crash info: Crash stacktrace: ntdll.dll!000007f9bc781069() KernelBase.dll!000007f9b978764e() KernelBase.dll!000007f9b97d3658() jam0.exe!_findnext64i32(__int64 hFile, _finddata64i32_t * pfd) Line 165 jam0.exe!file_dirscan(_object * dir, void (void *, _object *, int, __int64) * func, void * closure) Line 180 jam0.exe!builtin_glob(frame * frame, int flags) Line 718 jam0.exe!function_run(_function * function_, frame * frame, _stack * s) Line 3390 jam0.exe!evaluate_rule(_object * rulename, frame * frame) Line 264 jam0.exe!function_call_rule(_jam_function * function, frame * frame, _stack * s, int n_args, const char * unexpanded, _object * file, int line) Line 468 jam0.exe!function_run(_function * function_, frame * frame, _stack * s) Line 3950 jam0.exe!parse_file(_object * f, frame * frame) Line 57 jam0.exe!main(int argc, char * * argv, char * * arg_environ) Line 488 jam0.exe!__tmainCRTStartup() Line 241 jam0.exe!mainCRTStartup() Line 164 kernel32.dll!000007f9b9de167e() ntdll.dll!000007f9bc7a3501() Line where it crashed was: if (!FindNextFile((HANDLE)hFile, &wfd)) { I've tried to watch the values of arguments passes to FindNextFile() - hFile looked like proper handle, however wfd.cFileName and wfd.cAlternateFileName contained garbage. Is this a known issue for 1.53? I've compiled version 1.52 using the same environment and the same configuration and everything went ok, I did not manage to reproduce the crash. It looks like only version 1.53 is affected. Regards, Rafael Jeczalik

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Re: [boost] [log] Patch: rotating file collector
by Andrey Semashev 10 May '13

10 May '13

On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 3:58 PM, Alexander Arhipenko <arhipjan(a)gmail.com>wrote: > > I've added implementation of rotating file collector - > the patch against boost log trunk attached. > This is not the final version, I'm going at least to finish most of the > TODOs. > > However, it would be nice to receive feedback and questions from > library author as well as from people interested in this feature. > > Andrey, could you please find several minutes to review the attached patch? > Thanks for the patch. I didn't look deeply into it yet but from the first glance it looks like you changed the existing file collector rather than introduce an alternative one. Am I right? If so, could this be made as a pure addition rather than modification? I would prefer to keep the current behavior also available for the users. Also, I would like to discuss following question with you : > rotate_file invocation in ~text_file_backend - > I would prefer to have this call during text_file_backend construction > phase. > I'll have to take a closer look later to answer that but it seems odd to have to rotate something when nothing have been written yet. The rotate_file call is intended to place the written file to the storage governed by the collector, and at construction this file hasn't been created yet. Could you describe why you need this?

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[algorithm] More general purpose algorithms?
by Sai Kiran Talamudupula 10 May '13

10 May '13

Hi, I am new to using boost libraries. I want to contribute to [boost.algorithm]. I see that there is scope for adding more general purpose algorithms in the library now. If I might have some ideas, is this the right place to propose and discuss them? Do I need to follow any procedure and/or address a specific person? Best, Saki.

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Wanted: reviewers for boost.test doc overhaul
by legalize+jeeves＠mail.xmission.com 10 May '13

10 May '13

[Please do not mail me a copy of your followup] As per the "What do we do about boost.test?" thread last year, the biggest complaint seemed to be the documentation. I'm overhauling the documentation using quickbook and I'd appreciate incremental feedback along the way. Any takers? -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book <http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline> The Computer Graphics Museum <http://computergraphicsmuseum.org> The Terminals Wiki <http://terminals.classiccmp.org> Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

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Re: [boost] [TypeErasure] references
by Felipe Magno de Almeida 10 May '13

10 May '13

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 2:51 PM, Chapman, Alec <archapm(a)fas.harvard.edu>wrote: > On 7/26/2012, 5:45 PM, Chapman, Alec wrote: > > > The problem is that there are significant differences between > > > references and values. This is okay for Boost.Function, because > > > Boost.Function doesn't expose ant mutating operations. However, in > > > the more general case this behavior is too error prone. Just think > > > about what would happen if we allowed using boost::ref for > > > any_iterator. Some Algorithms assume that they can make copies of > iterators > > and that these iterators are independent of each other. > > > > These are exactly the sorts of algorithms I have in mind. What I am > suggesting > > is that the original object is held by reference, but when a copy is > made the > > underlying object is copied as well. With your method I do not see a > way to > > capture by reference and then pass that object to an algorithm that does > not > > have special logic to handle Boost.TypeErasure. > > > > Perhaps the false parallel with Boost.Function would be confusing. I > have also > > done it by overloading the constructor with a dummy parameter: > > > > int i = 0; > > any<requirements> x(i, type_erasure::as_reference); // x holds a pointer > to i > > any<requirements> y(x); // y allocates a new > > integer and initializes it with i > > ++y; // i is still 0 > > > > Hi Steven, > Have you had a chance to consider this? Please let me know if something > I'm suggesting isn't clear or if there is already a way to achieve this > with your library. > I also need something like this. I don't see much difference from using boost::ref and defining my copying and value semantics to not take the attributes into account as my documented semantics So I really don't see what the problem is. While algorithms might get confused, this is directly related to the semantics given, which might be different from type to type that is erased. That is no difference, to me, from creating a specific wrapper with different copying semantics. Your argument about any_iterator is valid because a forward iterator that doesn't save its position is not a forward iterator at all, but that's not true for all concepts. And using boost::ref by the user and implementing a non-ForwardIterator directly is no different. And creating specific wrappers will be a pain for these concepts that allow the implementation to use pointer/references. Using the _self& is no use for these concepts, since the whole point is to type erase, having multiple types to implement the same concept with a type-erased interface won't scale at all. Support for smart pointers and naked pointers would be a great plus as well. > Alec > Regards, -- Felipe Magno de Almeida

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Re: [boost] Git Modularization Ready for Review
by Niall Douglas 09 May '13

09 May '13

> > I'm far more confused as to why? Surely the conventional approach is to > > convert a SVN repo to GIT. > > Good luck with that, given the way SVN "branches" (really directories) > have been used in Boost's history. No automated tool is able to > determine how to map those things properly onto Git branches. You can > see evidence of that in repositories.txt (look at the "build" repository > declarations for example). Me personally I'd just chuck away any unmappable historical information. Chalk it up to a cost of transition. If they really need the history, they can go fetch it from the read-only SVN repo. > You act as though we haven't been thinking about how to do this well and > working on it for years already. We're quite well-aware how submodules > work. The use of submodules by most developers is supposed to be a > temporary transitional measure, since modularization is designed to > allow you to work with only the parts of Boost relevant to your project. You have mistaken my confusion for criticism. I am not criticizing. I am confused. > > Also, how is Boost going to manage dependency breakage across multiple > > submodules? > > What is "dependency breakage?" Generally speaking Git submodules are for loosely coupled relations because of how Git implements submodules. Some of Boost's constituent libraries do meet that definition (BPL, BGL, Math). Some do not, as they are too essential because so many other libraries depend on them (anything likely to enter the standard with TR2, the MPL, the PPL etc). I fear that if modularization is taken to its logical extreme, you could see submodules get out of step with other submodules. You may of course have already anticipated this and have implemented something I haven't realized. As I said, I am confused. > > Are you planning to keep headers in one monolithic repo > > No > > > but keep anything resulting in a DLL/SO in a submodule? Or are you > > planning to break out the headers into submodules too? > > Yes; it's already done, modulo some expected adjustments due to the > review I am requesting. One solution is to require all findable headers to live inside the main Boost repo [1], and only implementation to reside in submodules. That keeps minds focused on dependency management. [1]: By findable I mean that when Boost library users do #include <boost/whatever> they get the main Boost repo version, not the submodule version. I absolutely would expect an automated tool to pull headers from submodules, check them for ABI breakage and push them into the main repo. My point is that some sanity check ought to be there. > > I can see it becoming quite easy for submodules or branches or forks > > thereof to get out of step with one another. > > That's a *good* thing. We're trying to decouple. Most libraries will > be developed against the previous release of their dependencies. > > > I can see the present submodule heavy approach introducing a lot of > > anti-Git workflow because those submodules inside the boostorg > > organization are treated as special compared to other submodules. > > I don't have any idea what you mean here Git generally has you clone the authoritative master repo, you create a branch, make your changes. Once you're finished, you fetch latest master, merge into your branch until it's up to date, then generate a patch or pull request from your branch to authoritative master. Whoever gatekeeps that repo does the merge. Where I'm getting confused - again - is that it would seem that the submodule repos inside the Boost org section on github are the ones to be regression tested and used to assemble releases. So, instead of treating all git repos as one-among-many as say Linux would do, we've got a special "high" gold candidate set of git repos and then all other git repos. This appears to add an extra layer of syncing and merging, because surely Boost admin has the power to modify any of the high gc set of repos. I'm not saying that this choice isn't for very good reasons. It's just that from my experience a submodule heavy git repo with lots of tightly coupled submodules becomes a royal PITA for end users because you get all sorts of weird obtuse breakages for apparently no reason at the time. Maybe of course it's just me, and I have some mental block others don't have. And I absolutely agree that other projects such as KDE have adopted your approach and it seems to work for them. However Boost is not KDE. In my mental model of the world, Boost more resembles the Linux kernel in terms of interdependencies and size. KDE has a vastly more stable intra-module ABI and much more loosely coupled submodules. This interpretation may be a mistake of mine. Niall --- Opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily represent those of BlackBerry Inc.

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