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CMake - one more time
by Robert Ramey 28 Apr '16

28 Apr '16

Inspired by the recent discussion regarding CMake, I've spend some more time looking at this. As a result, I've done the following. a) I experimented with using CMake in the more customary manner in my canonical project Safe Numerics - (see Boost Library Incubator). The current version does distribute CMakeLists.txt around the subdirectories of the library root. My original objections to doing this were assuaged when I realized that boost build does the same thing. That is I typically have Jamfiles in side of test, example and sometimes other directories. b) One of the features that I much like about Boost Build is the possibility of arbitrary nesting of Jamfiles. This permits one to build/test a portion of one's library (e.g. test, example) as well as the whole library. For a large library this is indispensable. In spite of what many people think, this is not easily supported with CMake. However, I have found that with some extra effort, it is possible to support this to the extent we need it. So in this project ONE CAN BUILD (actually create an IDE project or makefile that builds) ANY OF THE "SUBPROJECTS" (TEST, EXAMPLE) AS WELL AS THE LIBRARY "SUPERPROJECT" c) CMake is indispensable to me: * it creates IDE projects for "any?" platform. I use IDE alot. * everyone else uses it - so it makes it easier to promote my work to others. * it's easier to make work - still a pain though * There is lots of information, around the net about how to use CMake, how easy it is etc. Although they help when you're looking for an answer (which is all the time) - they really betray how complex, arbitrary and complex the system is. * It has an almost of idiot proof GUI version which I use a lot. I really like this. * CMake is well maintained and supported by it's promoters. d) Boost Build * either just works (great!) or doesn't. If it doesn't it's almost impossible fix without getting help * I've never run across anyone outside of boost who uses it. It makes it harder to promote my work. * It's natural to compose projects into "super projects" * it's almost impossible to integrate with and IDE. At one time, I had things setup so I could debug executables created with boost build with the Visual Studio IDE and debugger. But it was just too fragile and time consuming to keep everything in sync. * it has a lot of "automatic" behavior which can be really, really confusion. A small example: you've got multiple compilers on your system. When it discovers this, it just picks the "best" one and you don't know which one you got until the project builds (or not). I'm sure this was implemented this way to make usage of boost build "simple" but it has the opposite effect. Much better would be fail immediately with a message "multiple compilers found:... use toolset=<compiler name> to select desired one." Some Conclusions - I'm trying to not make this a rant a) The ideal, platform independent build system does not yet exist. I guessing it never will. I'm sure it won't happen in my life time - but then I'm 68 - maybe you'll get lucky. b) Both systems are much more fragile, complicated and opaque than their promoters try to make you believe. It's not that they're lying, they truely believe in their own stuff. There is much re-invention of the wheel - The each created their own (half-assed) little language for goodness sake!!! c) Neither has really resolved the issue of nested projects in a clear way. Boost Build probably does or can do this. CMake has a system of "packages" and a whole 'nuther layer about "finding" them. Assuming it can be made to work - given the amount of time I've invested in CMake, I should know how to do this by now. d) I think it's time for Boost to be a little more open about tolerating/encouraging alternative build systems. I think our documentation approach is a model. Yeah it's a hodgepodge. But the various ways of doing pretty much work and generally don't stop working and we don't have to constantly spend effort bringing things up to the latest greatest system (which we couldn't agree upon anyway). We have libraries which have been going strong 15 years - and people can still read the docs. e) We should find some way to recognize those who have made the system work as well it has. Doug Gregor (boost book), Eric Niebler, Joel Guzman (quickbook). Vladimir Prus, Rene Rivera, Steve Watanabe. I know there others but these come to mind immediately. Note that I have only addressed the issue of library development which is my main interest. I'm really not seeing this issues related to users of libraries. In particular, CMake has the whole "find" thing which I'm still not even seeing the need for. If I want to use a library, I can build the library and move it to a common place with the headers, specify the include directory and I'm on my way. I'm sure someone will step up to enlighten me on this. Robert Ramey

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[1.61.0] Master branch is closed
by Vladimir Prus 27 Apr '16

27 Apr '16

Boosters, The master branch is now closed for all changes, except by permission from a release manager. Per schedule, the branch will be totally frozen on Saturday. Thanks, The Release Managers

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Test report generation stalled? Re: [1.61.0] Master branch is closed
by Rene Rivera 26 Apr '16

26 Apr '16

On Tue, Apr 26, 2016 at 2:36 PM, Thomas Trummer <th.trummer(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > On 26 Apr 2016, at 19:47, Rene Rivera <grafikrobot(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > > Thanks for the info.. But given that we don't have *any* test results > with > > MPI passing (i.e. nothing on develop yet).. I'm afraid it's going to stay > > broken this release. > > Is the test matrix actually working? There should be more recent results > than April 21… > Grrr.. Looks like report generation stopped on the 21st :-( -- -- Rene Rivera -- Grafik - Don't Assume Anything -- Robot Dreams - http://robot-dreams.net -- rrivera/acm.org (msn) - grafikrobot/aim,yahoo,skype,efnet,gmail

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modular-boost doc ?
by alainm 26 Apr '16

26 Apr '16

Hi, Would it be possible to have a pointer to the documentation related with the modular boost git mess under the "development" item of the boost main page ? it seems at least as important as some stuff like "Coding Guidelines for Integral Constant Expressions". Thanks Alain

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Re: [boost] New Lib "Beast", HTTP + WebSocket protocols
by Bjorn Reese 24 Apr '16

24 Apr '16

On 04/22/2016 07:01 PM, Vinnie Falco wrote: > Main page, with links to GitHub repository, HTML documentation and benchmarks: > http://vinniefalco.github.io/ > > Feedback welcome, the author checks email and Issues on the GitHub > repository. This project has been submitted to the Boost incubator. This looks like a nice library. You have clearly encountered the same pain points as I while working with other HTTP-based libraries, and you seem to have come up with solutions similar to those found in the Boost.Http project [1]. It may be a good idea if we joined the two projects together. Would you consider such an option? Last year, the Boost.Http project went through a formal Boost review. The summary [2] shows what the Boost community expects from a HTTP library. In order to address one of these expectations, we have a Boost Summer of Code project this year for a HTTP parser. [1] https://github.com/BoostGSoC14/boost.http [2] http://lists.boost.org/boost-announce/2015/08/0452.php

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[boot] using the boost name on unofficial libraries
by Sam Kellett 23 Apr '16

23 Apr '16

i see a *lot* of rejected / unfinished libraries that use the boost name with the intentions of one day becoming a boost library. doesn't this affect the brand strength associated with the boost name? i would have thought that it wouldn't be ok to name your library a boost library before it is officially accepted, but that doesn't seem to be the case? or is it the case but it isn't / can't be enforced?

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[gsoc16] Summer of Code 2016 shall proceed after all
by Niall Douglas 23 Apr '16

23 Apr '16

Dear Boost, We are very glad to announce that non-Google funding has been found to continue the Summer of Code for the following veteran student projects in Summer 2016: A. Boost Document, mentored by Antony Polukhin. Veteran student: Anurag Ghosh https://anuragxel.github.io/boost-document/ B. Boost.Compute, mentored by Kyle Lutz. Veteran student: Jakub Szuppe https://boostorg.github.io/compute/ C. Boost.Http, mentored by Bjorn Reese. Veteran student: Vinícius dos Santos Oliveira https://boostgsoc14.github.io/boost.http/ All three of these projects shall see a Summer of Code as if it were Google Summer of Code following the same timeline, mentor and student stipends, and progress acceptance criteria. Our thanks to the students and mentors for being so patient during the organisation of this funding. This all happened very quickly and much faster than Boost org processes normally happen - it would not have been possible without the efforts of Jon Kalb and Bryce Adelstein Lelbach, the latter of whom wrote up a great funding request worth reading at https://goo.gl/7v3VMK. Thanks are also due to the Boost Steering Committee for moving so quickly to vote on this, and to Boris Schäling for finding sponsorship for this effort. And finally congratulations to the veteran students! Niall and Bryce --- Boost C++ Libraries Google Summer of Code 2016 admin https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/wiki/SoC2016

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Interest in a "concepts lite" library?
by Juan Pedro Bolivar Puente 22 Apr '16

22 Apr '16

Hi! With concepts lite not getting into C++17, the need for library-based alternatives becomes more apparent. With this regard, the current Boost.ConceptCheck library is outdated, as it emulates an too old proposal for concepts, and it does not leverage more modern techniques (e.g. expression sfinae). Eric Niebler proposed in his Range-V3 library a technique to simulate concept checking using C++11 [1]. I myself implemented a variation of such technique in the Atria library [2]. Atria's implementation differs in two ways with Range-V3 concepts: - It is simpler, because it has no special support for refinements. A concept refines another just by checking the refined concept in the normal `requires` definition. The downside is that refinement information can not be used for dispatch. - It wants to be future-proof. Concepts defined with the `ABL_CONCEPT_SPEC` macro can be automatically upgraded to a Concepts Lite concept by redefining `ABL_CONCEPT` as `constexpr concept`. There are few reasons though why Atria's implementation could not be directly included in Boost. I would like to work on a more formal proposal, but first I'd like to know if there is interest in it, and if there are any obvious concerns or questionmarks. Thanks! JP [1] http://ericniebler.com/2013/11/23/concept-checking-in-c11/ [2] https://github.com/Ableton/atria/blob/master/src/atria/meta/concept.hpp https://github.com/Ableton/atria/blob/master/src/atria/meta/tst_concepts.cpp

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Ordering the header files in the library's doxygen reference
by Edward Diener 22 Apr '16

22 Apr '16

I use quickbook and doxygen to create the doc for my library. In my jamfile for building the docs I have the header files in my doxygen reference listed in the particular order I would like to see them in the reference when the documentation is built. But for some reason I cannot discern the order of the header files in the reference section of my final HTML documentation is not the same as the order in which I have the header files listed. Does anybody know how I can control the order of the header files listed in the reference section of my library's HTML documentation ?

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[function] Placement new warnings from gcc 6
by Andrey Semashev 22 Apr '16

22 Apr '16

Hi, In my tests on gcc 6 I'm seeing these warnings which stem from Boost.Function: ../boost/function/function_template.hpp:572:11: warning: placement new constructing an object of type 'boost::spirit::qi::detail::parser_binder<boost::spirit::qi::sequence<boost::fusion::cons<boost::spirit::qi::any_uint_parser<unsigned int, 10u, 1u, -1>, boost::fusion::cons<boost::spirit::qi::literal_char<boost::spirit::char_encoding::standard, true, false>, boost::fusion::cons<boost::spirit::qi::any_uint_parser<unsigned int, 10u, 1u, -1>, boost::fusion::cons<boost::spirit::qi::literal_char<boost::spirit::char_encoding::standard, true, false>, boost::fusion::cons<boost::spirit::qi::any_uint_parser<unsigned int, 10u, 1u, -1>, boost::fusion::cons<boost::spirit::qi::literal_char<boost::spirit::char_encoding::standard, true, false>, boost::fusion::cons<boost::spirit::qi::any_uint_parser<unsigned int, 10u, 1u, -1>, boost::fusion::nil_> > > > > > > >, mpl_::bool_<false> >' and size '8' in a region of type 'char' and size '1' [-Wplacement-new=] ../boost/function/function_base.hpp:308:13: warning: placement new constructing an object of type 'boost::detail::function::functor_manager_common<boost::spirit::qi::detail::parser_binder<boost::spirit::qi::sequence<boost::fusion::cons<boost::spirit::qi::any_uint_parser<unsigned int, 10u, 1u, -1>, boost::fusion::cons<boost::spirit::qi::literal_char<boost::spirit::char_encoding::standard, true, false>, boost::fusion::cons<boost::spirit::qi::any_uint_parser<unsigned int, 10u, 1u, -1>, boost::fusion::cons<boost::spirit::qi::literal_char<boost::spirit::char_encoding::standard, true, false>, boost::fusion::cons<boost::spirit::qi::any_uint_parser<unsigned int, 10u, 1u, -1>, boost::fusion::cons<boost::spirit::qi::literal_char<boost::spirit::char_encoding::standard, true, false>, boost::fusion::cons<boost::spirit::qi::any_uint_parser<unsigned int, 10u, 1u, -1>, boost::fusion::nil_> > > > > > > >, mpl_::bool_<false> > >::functor_type {aka boost::spirit::qi::detail::parser_binder<boost::spirit::qi::sequence<boost::fusion::cons<boost::spirit::qi::any_uint_parser<unsigned int, 10u, 1u, -1>, boost::fusion::cons<boost::spirit::qi::literal_char<boost::spirit::char_encoding::standard, true, false>, boost::fusion::cons<boost::spirit::qi::any_uint_parser<unsigned int, 10u, 1u, -1>, boost::fusion::cons<boost::spirit::qi::literal_char<boost::spirit::char_encoding::standard, true, false>, boost::fusion::cons<boost::spirit::qi::any_uint_parser<unsigned int, 10u, 1u, -1>, boost::fusion::cons<boost::spirit::qi::literal_char<boost::spirit::char_encoding::standard, true, false>, boost::fusion::cons<boost::spirit::qi::any_uint_parser<unsigned int, 10u, 1u, -1>, boost::fusion::nil_> > > > > > > >, mpl_::bool_<false> >}' and size '8' in a region of type 'char' and size '1' [-Wplacement-new=] I'm not familiar with boost::function internals, but the warning looks serious enough to do something about it. I.e. if it's actually benign, it would be nice to silence it to avoid causing panic.

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