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[hana] Review
by edouard＠fausse.info 16 Jun '15

16 Jun '15

Dear all, Please find attached my review of Hana. > - Whether you believe the library should be accepted into Boost > * Conditions for acceptance Definitely yes. I just have a very minor remark considering the documentation. > - Your name Edouard Alligand > - Your knowledge of the problem domain. I have been writing C++ professionally for 15 years and done a lot of TMP for many software project, for things such as compile-time introspection for serialization, enhanced checks at compile-time to improve correctness and compile-time pre-computations. I've done that with Boost.MPL, Boost.Fusion and some custom MPL. > You are strongly encouraged to also provide additional information: > - What is your evaluation of the library's: > * Design I am very much impressed by the design of Hana and the cleverness of the usage of C++ 14 lambdas. > * Implementation As far as I can judge it is very well implemented. > * Documentation I think writing "using namespace boost::hana" for the documentation is confusion. I know it might be nit-picking, but I think the example is easier to understand when you read struct Fish { std::string name; }; struct Cat { std::string name; }; struct Dog { std::string name; }; auto animals = boost::hana::make_tuple(Fish{"Nemo"}, Cat{"Garfield"}, Dog{"Snoopy"}); instead of struct Fish { std::string name; }; struct Cat { std::string name; }; struct Dog { std::string name; }; auto animals = make_tuple(Fish{"Nemo"}, Cat{"Garfield"}, Dog{"Snoopy"}); Because if you read diagonally (and let's be realistic, we all read diagonally documentation) you might miss what is going on. At least some namespace alias would be helpful. I personally think redundancy is good in documentations. > * Tests There is a satisfactory number of tests and the developer does continuous integration. The developer tests on several compiler versions at every change which is a must for a MPL. > * Usefulness Boost.Hana is extremely useful, especially the compile-time introspection it adds. It uses macros but as long as the language doesn't provide features to do compile-time introspection, there is no way around this (that I can think of) It has a lot of algorithms out of the box (at least I couldn't find one I would need that was missing). I like the compile-time arithmetic part of the library and find it very convenient. I'm a big fan of Boost.Fusion and I use Boost.MPL a lot. Hana replaces both libraries and compiles faster at the cost of requiring recent compilers. It is, to me, a very acceptable tradeoff. > - Did you attempt to use the library? If so: > * Which compiler(s) Clang 3.5 on FreeBSD 10.1 and libc++ > * What was the experience? Any problems? The only problem I have with Hana is that it doesn't work with Visual Studio. The lack of VS is the only reason why we didn't adopt Hana on our product. Nevertheless, I don't think it a showstopper. Hana is an advanced MPL and the problem will solve by itself with time. It works, in my opinion, on a sufficient number on platforms at the moment to be accepted into Boost. > - How much effort did you put into your evaluation of the review? I ran by the examples again as I would if I were trying the library for the first time. I have been following Boost.Hana since Louis' presentation at last year cppcon in Bellevue, Wa. Kind regards. --Edouard

2 1

different Problem cross-compiling against boost.context for Raspberry Pi (2)
by Biddiscombe, John A. 16 Jun '15

16 Jun '15

When compiling HPX against the now built boost, I have this error message /home/biddisco/apps/boost-1_58_0/include/boost-1_58/boost/context/execution_context.hpp:202:52: error: âstd::index_sequenceâ has not been declared std::index_sequence< I ... >) { index_sequence appears to be c++14, I'm using -std=c++11, can one tell if this likely a mistake on my part somewhere, or a possible problem with boost.context? (Is there a BOOST_FLAG_SOMETHING, I should add to prevent t being used?) thanks JB

2 3

[Advice] Documenting the "refined by" relation for concepts
by Louis Dionne 15 Jun '15

15 Jun '15

Dear all, When documenting a concept in a generic library, it is common to include what this concept is a "refinement of", i.e. which other concept(s) it specializes. For example, see the ForwardContainer concept from the SGI STL [1], which is a refinement of the Container concept. I find documenting this relation very useful. However, I have never seen the reverse relation of being "refined by" documented. It has been suggested to me [2] that Hana should document this "refined by" relation. Having never seen it done before, I'd like to know what the seasoned generic library writers think about it. The possibilities I personally see are 1. It's just not useful, and that's why it's not done 2. It's actually harmful, because you can't predict who is going to refine a concept 3. There's no "logical" reason behind this, it just happened to work that way in the SGI STL and everybody else followed that lead. Any input is appreciated. Regards, Louis [1]: https://www.sgi.com/tech/stl/ForwardContainer.html [2]: https://github.com/ldionne/hana/issues/104

5 10

Genetics library - advice needed.
by Andy Thomason 15 Jun '15

15 Jun '15

Hi All, I am getting close to rolling out the first draft of our genetics library. https://github.com/andy-thomason/Boost.Genetics This library allows you to search gene sequences - most commonly the human genome - (eg. ENSEMBL .fa files) for inexact matches. At present the library emphasises thoroughness over performance but the latter will improve. The algorithms are all single-threaded at present as the user should provide the thread control. Feedback would be useful. I appreciate that this is still a little way from being a final submission, in particular we need: * documentation * more examples (currently only a python binding example) * more tests I'll be setting these as a task for my students. Don't expect it to build and run out of the box except for the unit tests and they might not wor in 32 bit builds. I'd also apreciate help with the build system as getting a build on 64 bit windows is a challenge for Boost.Python at present and some wisdom would go far. Are there plans for VC2013/15 solution generation from BJAM? That would be useful. Is there a continuous integration system we could use to pre-check the library? Andy. --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. https://www.avast.com/antivirus

5 7

[Graphs] Bug in directed edge-connectivity algorithm
by Michele Borassi 15 Jun '15

15 Jun '15

Dear all, my name is Michele Borassi, and I am a user of Boost Graph library, version 1.58.0. I have found a problem in the edge connectivity algorithm: if the input is a directed path with 3 vertices (0, 1, 2) and 2 edges ((0,1), (1,2)), the output is 1 (while it should be 0, since the graph is not strongly connected). However, if edge (1,0) is added, the output becomes (correctly) 0. A minimal working example that shows this issue is attached; my output is: Path of 3 vertices and 2 edges. The edge connectivity is 1. Added edge (1,0): now there are 3 edges. The edge connectivity becomes 0. Could you also explain me which is the best way to report a bug? I have checked your web page http://www.boost.org/development/bugs.html, but all links seem to be broken. Waiting for your answer, I thank you in advance, Michele Borassi

4 5

[Better Enums] More complete release - feedback requested
by Anton Bachin 15 Jun '15

15 Jun '15

Hello, I posted to the mailing list some weeks ago concerning a reflective enum library. I’ve since done a lot of work and made a new release. I’d like to get feedback from anyone that is interested. The library can be found at: https://github.com/aantron/better-enums At the risk of repeating myself, let me summarize for those who didn’t read the original thread: the library generates reflective enums that support string conversion and iteration, but with a nicer syntax than seen to date. Also, in C++11, the reflective capabilities are accessible at compile time. Since the original thread, I have made the library work with C++98 with the variadic macro extension, tested it thoroughly on clang, gcc, and msvc, rewrote the documentation, and made the interface (potentially) completely constexpr. The reason I say potentially is that there is one slow feature, which is disabled by default, but can be opted into easily. There is a tutorial starting here: http://aantron.github.io/better-enums/tutorial/HelloWorld.html and a few examples of “advanced” usage, the most interesting one of which I think is: http://aantron.github.io/better-enums/demo/SpecialValues.html (Thanks to Gottlob Frege for making a suggestion, which I adapted to improve this example.) I’d like to take this as far as possible towards solving the problems with C++ enum maintainability, and providing improved enum types that are as near to first-class as possible. I would be very happy if you just tried this out and let me know what you think and what problems you ran into. Thank you, Anton

6 27

a thread pool that allows recursive calls
by Frédéric Bron 13 Jun '15

13 Jun '15

Dear boosters, I need to perform some tasks in parallel and want to control the number of CPUs that are used. A threadpool seems to be what I want and http://threadpool.sourceforge.net/ looks good. However, my tasks may also want to launch some parallel sub-tasks and the sub-tasks may also want to launch tome parallel sub-sub-tasks... and this is not possible with this implementation of threadpool. I have programmed something that works and I wonder if anyone had also already done that because my implementation is very rudimental for now and if something already exists I do not want to reinvent the wheel. Having said that, if there is nothing publicly available (I mean open-source), do you think it would be valuable I share what I did and make it available to boost as a library? This would require some advices/reviews from thread experts and a lot of work from me but I would be happy to contribute. Kind regards, Frédéric

4 5

Heterogeneous Container Library (HCL) Feedback and Testing
by James Armstrong 13 Jun '15

13 Jun '15

I send out a little feeler about a month ago for interest in a container library which natively allows users to insert a heterogeneous set of types. After getting some really good feedback, I think I have settled into something that is efficient, has a nice clean interface, and provides some useful capabilities. I am hoping people can take a look at the code, test it out, and provide an additional feedback in terms of interface, implementation, bugs, or additional features/classes that would be useful. I have implemented a set of containers which mimic the capabilities of the STL containers. These are (so far) * heterovector * heterostack * heteroqueue * heterolist * heteroforward_list * heterodeque These containers were implemented using variadic templates and were somewhat inspired from the posts of Joaquín Muñoz. http://bannalia.blogspot.com/2014/05/fast-polymorphic-collections.html http://bannalia.blogspot.com/2014/05/fast-polymorphic-collections-with.html In addition, I have an adaptor class which provides a simple interface for accessing data of a specific type from a container of type_erased objects (boost::any, boost::variant, etc). The code is hosted at https://github.com/armstrhu/HCL and the directory structure there should be simple to navigate. There is an include directory which contains the header files needed, and an examples directory which provides examples for using the containers and the adaptors. As they mimic the STL containers, once you see how to use them (basically just provide an additional template parameter) you should be able to use them smoothly. One note is I focused mainly on developing the heterovector class, and the remainders are primarily copies of that class where std::vector has been replaced with std::deque, std::list, etc, and associated methods added/removed as needed. I have primarily tested with the heterovector, so having people check out the other classes would be nice :) Any and all feedback is much appreciated. Thanks! -- James Armstrong

7 18

[Geometry] Wrong results for dissolve Polygon
by Andreas Wimmer 12 Jun '15

12 Jun '15

Dear Boost Geometry Contributors, I am testing the boost::geometry::dissolve function upon some invalid polygons that are produced by a certain in-house segmentation alg. The fact that the algorithm is producing possibly invalid polygons cannot be changed easily so I thought I will fix them afterwards using dissolve from “geometry/extensions/algorithms/dissolve.hpp” for the latest boost 1.58 version. Unfortunately I stumbled over the following polygons for which dissolve produces wrong results. The following code illustrates the result using namespace boost::geometry; using namespace boost::geometry::model; using namespace boost::geometry::model::d2; int main(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[]) { polygon< point_xy<float> > Poly; read_wkt("POLYGON((10 10, 10 20, 20 20, 15 12, 15 18, 20 10, 10 10))", Poly); multi_polygon< polygon< point_xy< float > > > Dissolved; boost::geometry::dissolve(Poly, Dissolved); } Which results in a polygon including the small intersection part which should be excluded from the polygon And even more problematic the following example (same polygon with and additional self-touching outer ring) results in missing the entire main part of the polygon int main(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[]) { polygon< point_xy<float> > Poly; read_wkt("POLYGON((10 10, 10 20, 20 20, 20 25, 22 25, 20 20, 15 12, 15 18, 20 10, 10 10))", Poly); multi_polygon< polygon< point_xy< float > > > Dissolved; boost::geometry::dissolve(Poly, Dissolved); } I hope somebody can show me what I did wrong or what I can to too work around this problem. Best regards, Andreas Wimmer

2 1

Appveyor
by Mathieu Champlon 12 Jun '15

12 Jun '15

Hello, I've seen it mentioned a few times on the mailing list. Can anyone point me to a boost library (or a library which makes use of boost) which builds on appveyor ? A find for appveyor.xml in the boost/libs directory does not yield anything and I couldn't find a way to search for projects on appveyor itself... Thank you ! MAT.

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[status] How should boost/status master be updated?
by Adam Wulkiewicz 11 Jun '15

11 Jun '15

Hi, Some time ago I prepared a PR for develop version of boost/status. Now I'd like to propagate the changes to master. How should I do that? I saw that there are some changes made only in develop and other only in master. Some commits were cherry-picked. What should be the practice in this case? Shouldn't status be made a separate module? It'd greately simplify the synchronization of branches. Regards, Adam

1 0

[boost.lockfree] spsc_queue read/write_available
by Philip Bennefall 11 Jun '15

11 Jun '15

Hi all, I am debugging a crash that I am getting inside of the pop method in spsc_queue from boost.lockfree. I am not sure exactly what is happening yet, but I do have one question. I call read_available and write_available a few times, and am wondering why read_available can only be called from the producer thread and why write_available can only be called from the consumer thread? Wouldn't it make sense to call read_available from the consumer, and write_available from the producer? Why is it the other way around? Currently I call write_available from the thread that pops, and read_available from the thread that pushes. Did I interpret the documentation correctly? If so, some clarifications would be much appreciated. Thanks! Kind regards, Philip Bennefall

2 2

sourceforge and release hosting
by Adam Walling 11 Jun '15

11 Jun '15

Should releases be hosted somewhere other than sourceforge? I've ran across this regarding boost twice this week, and I'm sure we are all well aware of the history of problems that sourceforge has been accumulating. Personally I think twice now every time I happen upon sourceforge, and despite being a source target than binary release, I can't help but be disturbed by these recent events. And I certainly don't want boost associated. Are there any strong feelings among us here regarding this?

7 10

[BestPracticeHandbook] Try the library online
by Krzysztof Jusiak 10 Jun '15

10 Jun '15

Hi, I've recently added a new badge (try boost.di | online) to proposed boost.di library. It uses Wandbox (awesome) facilities to check the library using online compiler (Wandbox supports newest gcc/clang). IMHO this approach is really useful for reviews and new users, since they don't have to install anything, just click the link and its done. They can experiment and then if they like it, clone the library and explore it more. You can check the badge here: http://krzysztof-jusiak.github.io/di/cpp14/boost/libs/di/doc/html And, for inpatients, direct link to online compiler with the library: http://melpon.org/wandbox/permlink/O3ABWKU3VBV3WG8J Let me know, what do you think. Cheers, Kris

2 2

[Config] Support for switching between std:: and boost:: equivalents.
by John Maddock 10 Jun '15

10 Jun '15

There is a pull-request for Config to provide support for switching between boost:: and std:: library equivalents: https://github.com/boostorg/config/pull/63 My questions are: * Is this the right approach? And, * Is Boost.Config the right place for it? Thanks for your comments, John.

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Interest in B-Tree and B+-Tree Implementation?
by Timo Bingmann 10 Jun '15

10 Jun '15

Hello people, I want to ask if there is an interest in adding an in-memory B+-Tree container implementation that I wrote some time ago: https://github.com/bingmann/stx-btree http://panthema.net/2007/stx-btree/ It emulates the std::set/map/multiset/multimap interfaces as far as possible (there are some unavoidable minor exceptions). And since I keep telling my collegues to stop using std::map for bigger instances, I think adding it to Boost would be a good idea. So ... I could clean up my old implementation, add C++11/Boost move semantics, use of uninitialized objects, boostify various things, etc, etc, and then things should be pretty fine. I also have an idea to modify/fork the implementation to create a B-tree (non-plus) container, which should be a bit slower, but provide an interface even closer to std::map (only remaining unavoidable incompatibility would be with iterator invalidation). My main question before starting this is whether it is a better idea to add it to Ion's existing Container library, or to add it as a separate "library" under Boost like the existing circular_buffer, which is pretty old. Apparently libraries have gotten bigger over Boost's life. So which variant would be better? The "Container" library seems to be more targeted at reimplementing STL containers with new features, and simple new containers, not complexer ones? But it should still be a good match. In the incubator I found the "STL Extensions" submission, which appears to be dead. It aims to provide "augmented array based B+ trees", which is different from the usual trees where nodes are dynamically allocated. Best Regards, Timo Bingmann

4 5

[regression] Displaying test categories in the regression matrix
by Adam Wulkiewicz 09 Jun '15

09 Jun '15

Some time ago I defined the categories for tests in Geometry in the explicit-failures-markup.xml file in develop: https://github.com/boostorg/boost/pull/80/files What I'd like to achieve is a matrix similar to the Chrono's one: http://www.boost.org/development/tests/develop/developer/chrono.html However after merging the PR there are no categories in the Geometry matrix. Am I doing it in the correct way? Which version of the explicit-failures-markup.xml is used by the report program, from the develop or master branch? Or maybe must the file be manually placed somewhere? Regards, Adam

1 0

[hana]Either generalization & missing variant
by Larry Evans 09 Jun '15

09 Jun '15

The page: http://ldionne.com/hana/structboost_1_1hana_1_1Either.html contains: An Either contains either a left value or a right value, both of which may have different data types. An Either containing a left value a is represented as left(a), and an Either containing a right value b is represented as right(b). which makes anyone familiar with boost::variant to think that hana's Either is simply a binary boost::variant, and left(a) ~=~ variant<A,B>(a) right(b) ~=~ variant<A,B>(b) where ~=~ means some sort of similarity. However, since the left and right functions only have 1 argument and no template arguments, they can't produce something like variant<A,B> where the left and right types are known. IOW, it seems that left and right are just wrapper's around the types. Looking at the code, the wrappers, _left and _right are defined here: https://github.com/ldionne/hana/blob/master/include/boost/hana/either.hpp#L… https://github.com/ldionne/hana/blob/master/include/boost/hana/either.hpp#L… But why should Either be limited just to _left and _right wrappers. Why not provide wrapper's tagged by some enumerable? For example, something like this: template < typename X , typename Enumerable=unsigned , Enumerable tag=Tag() > struct _tagged //instead of _left and _right : operators::adl { X value; . . . template <typename... F> constexpr decltype(auto) go(F...&& f) const& { return (hana::arg<unsigned(tag)>(f...))(value); } . . . }; This would be more general than the binary Either. In addition, _tagged could be used elsewhere. For example, it could be used in a multiple inheritance implementation of tuple. _tagged is already present in a more general form, in fusion: http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_39_0/libs/fusion/doc/html/fusion/support/pa… where: _tagged<X,0> ~=~ fusion::pair<int_<0>,X> The obvious advantage of Either is that it doesn't require memory use equal to the max of the components when the component with the minimum size is used. IOW, left(a) only requires sizeof(A) and right(b) only requires sizeof(B). OTOH, Either, or the generalization described above, can't be used where a true variant is needed, for example, in spirit's attributes for the alternative parser. And this brings up another question. Although hana has a tuple, it doesn't have a variant. Is there any reason for excluding variant from hana? -regards, Larry

4 8

[metaparse] Review period starts May 25th and ends June 7th - ongoing
by Christophe Henry 09 Jun '15

09 Jun '15

Dear all, The review of the metaparse library started last Monday. Please consider taking the time to review it and post comments or reviews on this list. Thanks, Christophe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dear all, The review of the Metaparse library starts next Monday, May 25th and ends June 7th. Metaparse was written by Abel Sinkovics. Metaparse is a parser generator library for template metaprograms. The purpose of this library is to support the creation of parsers that parse at compile time. This library is intended to be used for embedded domain specific language creation for C++ and can help libraries provide a better interface. It is similar to Boost.Spirit, however while parsers built with Spirit parse at run-time, parsers built with Metaparse parse at compile-time. It makes it possible for library authors to provide an interface that follows the common notation of the problem domain of the library. (eg. SQL queries, grammars, etc written in their common notation instead of similar-looking C++ expressions). For example there is a (yet incomplete) interface for Boost.Spirit that makes it possible to write MPLLIBS_REGEX("^[abcd][3-8]\\.foo$") instead of bos >> set[as_xpr('a')|'b'|'c'|'d'] >> range('3','8') >> '.' >> 'f' >> 'o' >> 'o' >> eos and make the parser built with Metaparse generate the latter expression from the former one. (It can be found here: https://github.com/istvans/mpllibs/tree/master/libs/xlxpressive) Since the library is based on template metaprogramming, the DSLs can be used for type validation as well. This is demonstrated by the type-safe printf implementation ( http://abel.web.elte.hu/mpllibs/safe_printf/index.html) It type-checks the arguments of a printf call based on the format string and has zero runtime overhead compared to unchecked printf. Parsers can be constructed in a declarative manner and (even though this is template metaprogramming based) remain readable. The implementation reflects the grammar it parses (with additional elements for semantic actions). Even though the library requires the parser author to write template metaprograms, the development of parsers is well supported by tools like Metashell and MDB. An important aspect of parsers (built with this library or another one) is error reporting for invalid input. The library offers tools for the parser authors to be able to provide useful error messages in case of parsing errors. Here is an example error report by a parser built with Metaparse (the parser can be found in the Getting Started guide of the library): ..... x__________________PARSING_FAILED__________________x<1, 5, unpaired<1, 1, literal_expected<')'>>> .... It is an error report letting the developer know that a closing paren is missing at line 1, column 5 and the unclosed opening paren is in line 1, column 1. Metaparse can be downloaded from Github: https://github.com/sabel83/mpllibs/tree/master/mpllibs/metaparse And a very complete tutorial: http://abel.web.elte.hu/mpllibs/metaparse/getting_started.html The tutorial also offers the nice feature of a link to metashell for quick-starting trying out the library: http://abel.web.elte.hu/shell/metashell.html Boost.Msm v3 also implements a new compile-time strings based front-end called eUML2 to demonstrate the power of the library and the conciseness and expressiveness it allows. Please have a look at the documentation: https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://raw.githubusercontent.com/boostorg/m… Everybody on this list is invited to participate in this formal review. I hope to see your review of Metaparse, including your vote on acceptance, and I welcome your participation in the ensuing discussions on the Boost developers' mailing list. Please always include in your review a vote as to whether the library should be accepted into Boost. Additionally please consider giving feedback on the following general topics: - What is your evaluation of the design? - What is your evaluation of the implementation? - What is your evaluation of the documentation? - What is your evaluation of the potential usefulness of the library? - Did you try to use the library? - With what compiler? - Did you have any problems? - How much effort did you put into your evaluation? A glance? A quick reading? In-depth study? - Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain? Regards, Christophe Review Manager

9 28

Github and forks
by Edward Diener 08 Jun '15

08 Jun '15

My use case is: I want to create a Github PR request against a Boost submodule repository. I then want to create a separate Github PR request against the same Boost submodule repository. I understand the Github mechanism of forking a repository and creating a PR request. For some reason which I do not understand Github will not allow their online forking mechanism to fork the same repository more than once to different names within a user account. In other words if I fork a Boost submodule repository to my user account, rename the repository, and then fork the same Boost repository to my user account again it will just update the renamed repository rather than create a new forked repository again. Considering that Github allows any repository you can find there to be forked to your user account, can anybody think of why Github will not allow the same repository to be forked twice to different repositories ? Of course I can get around this Github forking limitation by creating a new Github repository in myn user account, cloning an existing Github repository locally, and then pushing that cloned repository to my new Github repository. That will create two different repositories off of the same Github repository in my user account. But in this case I can't use the online PR mechanism on this second repository against the original Github repository.

3 3

Dependency report for develop-8fa72a7
by Peter Dimov 08 Jun '15

08 Jun '15

The latest dependency report, which reflects the new "version 2" type traits, is here: http://pdimov.com/tmp/report-develop-8fa72a7/module-overview.html http://pdimov.com/tmp/report-develop-8fa72a7/module-levels.html http://pdimov.com/tmp/report-develop-8fa72a7/module-weights.html

1 0

[Boost-announce] [metaparse] Review period starts May 25th and ends June 7th
by Christophe Henry 08 Jun '15

08 Jun '15

Dear all, The review of the Metaparse library starts next Monday, May 25th and ends June 7th. Metaparse was written by Abel Sinkovics. Metaparse is a parser generator library for template metaprograms. The purpose of this library is to support the creation of parsers that parse at compile time. This library is intended to be used for embedded domain specific language creation for C++ and can help libraries provide a better interface. It is similar to Boost.Spirit, however while parsers built with Spirit parse at run-time, parsers built with Metaparse parse at compile-time. It makes it possible for library authors to provide an interface that follows the common notation of the problem domain of the library. (eg. SQL queries, grammars, etc written in their common notation instead of similar-looking C++ expressions). For example there is a (yet incomplete) interface for Boost.Spirit that makes it possible to write MPLLIBS_REGEX("^[abcd][3-8]\\.foo$") instead of bos >> set[as_xpr('a')|'b'|'c'|'d'] >> range('3','8') >> '.' >> 'f' >> 'o' >> 'o' >> eos and make the parser built with Metaparse generate the latter expression from the former one. (It can be found here: https://github.com/istvans/mpllibs/tree/master/libs/xlxpressive) Since the library is based on template metaprogramming, the DSLs can be used for type validation as well. This is demonstrated by the type-safe printf implementation ( http://abel.web.elte.hu/mpllibs/safe_printf/index.html) It type-checks the arguments of a printf call based on the format string and has zero runtime overhead compared to unchecked printf. Parsers can be constructed in a declarative manner and (even though this is template metaprogramming based) remain readable. The implementation reflects the grammar it parses (with additional elements for semantic actions). Even though the library requires the parser author to write template metaprograms, the development of parsers is well supported by tools like Metashell and MDB. An important aspect of parsers (built with this library or another one) is error reporting for invalid input. The library offers tools for the parser authors to be able to provide useful error messages in case of parsing errors. Here is an example error report by a parser built with Metaparse (the parser can be found in the Getting Started guide of the library): ..... x__________________PARSING_FAILED__________________x<1, 5, unpaired<1, 1, literal_expected<')'>>> .... It is an error report letting the developer know that a closing paren is missing at line 1, column 5 and the unclosed opening paren is in line 1, column 1. Metaparse can be downloaded from Github: https://github.com/sabel83/mpllibs/tree/master/mpllibs/metaparse And a very complete tutorial: http://abel.web.elte.hu/mpllibs/metaparse/getting_started.html The tutorial also offers the nice feature of a link to metashell for quick-starting trying out the library: http://abel.web.elte.hu/shell/metashell.html Boost.Msm v3 also implements a new compile-time strings based front-end called eUML2 to demonstrate the power of the library and the conciseness and expressiveness it allows. Please have a look at the documentation: https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://raw.githubusercontent.com/boostorg/m… Everybody on this list is invited to participate in this formal review. I hope to see your review of Metaparse, including your vote on acceptance, and I welcome your participation in the ensuing discussions on the Boost developers' mailing list. Please always include in your review a vote as to whether the library should be accepted into Boost. Additionally please consider giving feedback on the following general topics: - What is your evaluation of the design? - What is your evaluation of the implementation? - What is your evaluation of the documentation? - What is your evaluation of the potential usefulness of the library? - Did you try to use the library? - With what compiler? - Did you have any problems? - How much effort did you put into your evaluation? A glance? A quick reading? In-depth study? - Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain? Regards, Christophe Review Manager

23 76

Correct spelling of "suppress"
by Alex Henrie 08 Jun '15

08 Jun '15

Hi, Could you guys take a look at these two pull requests? https://github.com/boostorg/assign/pull/9/files https://github.com/boostorg/iostreams/pull/12/files I thought they would be uncontroversial, but it has been months and they have still not been merged. -Alex

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Boost.Container and tests: why is Boost.Test bypassed
by Thorsten Ottosen 08 Jun '15

08 Jun '15

Hi Ion, I have a GSOC student writing some containers that fit naturally into Boost.Container. So he tries to do things the way that you have done, which is fine. I do wonder why the tests are written with assertions and not using Boost.Test? Is it a dependency problem or? Thanks -Thorsten

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What would make tool authors happier..
by Rene Rivera 08 Jun '15

08 Jun '15

Warning.. Some of this may sound contentious at times.. But that's life ;-) There are a number of disparate discussions going on at the moment that can be summarized as: * A tool author suggesting a change (to structure, or process, or something else) that would make writing tools easier and less error prone. * Lots of responses about how such a change would be disruptive to current practices. * Some responses about how such a change is beneficial to the future of Boost, its growth and possible real modular future. * Some more responses about how the tool authors should just account for all the special cases of the current practices and still bring about the vaunted modular future. So I want to summarize some key changes, as I understand them, that I think will make movement towards a better tooling and development future less painful for the minuscule minority of the people who write the tools that aim to bring that future into existence. First the key aspects of the changes are: 1. Normalized and regular directory structure of libraries, tools, and root. 2. Minimal non-library content and structure. 3. Stricter rules and guidelines for library authors to follow regarding the needs of the infrastructure tools. Some of the specific changes some of us have mentioned that touch on the above aspects are.. * Making the combined library headers go into boost-root/include. See separate post from Peter Dimov about this. This touches on #1 as it makes for a user and tool expected location. That is, users are accustomed to looking for a top level include. And having such a location would reduce the documentation and instruction needed to point them away from their intuitive behavior. External tools also expect to find such a directory for a library, which is what a monolithic Boost looks like to tools. Hence it would make it easier to use, incorporate, author, etc tools. * What I've mentioned as "flattening" of libraries. Which touches on #1 and #3 above. This has multiple parts/meanings so let me explain each one separately. First, it means is banning of git sub-modules outside of directly under boost-root/libs and boost-root/tools. Dealing with git sub-modules is difficult enough even when it's just a handful of sub-modules. But dealing with the 130 sub-modules we have now is an insanity inducing experience when there needs to be handling for special locations. Currently the only culprit of this is "libs/numeric". And I understand that it was done this way because that was the old structure converted to the modular git form. But I think it's time to truly abandon the old structures as they are standing in the way of better tools and user experience. As an example of user experience, I once tried to set up my own subset of Boost as a git repo that had all the libraries and tools needed for the documentation toolchain. It was excruciating to manually discover what all those libraries where particularly because of no initially knowing about this aspect of our current sub-modules. Second, it means formalizing and regulating the top level structure of libraries. For the longest time we've had an accepted top level structure. Unfortunately library authors have added to that top level structure. For example to manage "sub-libraries" or "sub-parts" of their library... Which is understandable. But it makes life more difficult for the tools that rely on the structure assertions. For example currently the testing scripts rely on people updating a single listing file at "boost-root/status/Jamfile.v2". When in an ideal world the test tools would be able to automatically discover that information. Practically it means that currently that Jamfile lists 127 test dirs. But a cursory discovery of test dirs goes up to a possible 197. As far as following the top-level library structure.. There are currently 279 files and directories at the library top level that are not in the accepted set (and I'm already excluding things like readmes and changelogs, even though changelogs should be in docs). But do note.. That I'm not suggesting that we immediately ban the old structure. But that we start discussing what are the needs of library authors and that we come up with a consistent and enforced structure that can relied upon by users and tools. Some changes that may be the first time I bring them up.. * Remove as much as possible from boost-root. This is mostly #2 above. First, I would like to remove the "boost-root/more" directory. Stuff in it are docs of various kinds and should be placed in "boost-root/doc", in the website, in tool docs, or in library docs. While doing that I'm sure we will likely also rewrite/clean-up those documents to better reflect the present. Second, I would like to move as many of the root build files to a "boost-root/build" directory. Ideally they would all be moved but it may not be possible, and practical, to do so. This would mirror the general top-level structure and hence make it a bit more intuitive for new authors and users to find. Third, I would like to clean up the various CSS and HTML sources at the root to either a smaller number (do we really need index.htm *and* index.html?), or to the doc directory. I know.. This isn't exactly in the vein of what makes it easier for tool developers. But it does make it easier for users to initially navigate (because there's less noise for them to look at). Last, I would like to re/move the "boost-root/status" directory. Two options I'm considering are moving to be "boost-root/test" to match the usual name for testing scripts. Or removing it and replacing it logic in the regression tools that is equivalent (i.e. move the functionality to the separate regression git repo). I believe that all those changes will help in moving us toward what I'm starting to call a "comprehensive" Boost release. Such a release would not follow the monolithic structure we currently have of needing the big include directory. But instead would be a plain collection of the individual libraries and tools that users can enable/install from the comprehensive package they download. Or possibly use directly if they add the individual libraries to their project search (and obviously build for the ones that need it). Such a "comprehensive" release would make the release process, and the tools driving it, a much simpler process and almost certainly increase the frequency of comprehensive release (possibly even to an almost weekly or daily occurrence). Last note.. It's never too late to fix problems even if there's work needed to adjust to the fixes. After all, programmers are accustomed to change. We deal with it and move on. So if we can make changes that reduce our future pain, we should do those changes. -- -- 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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