- Boost - lists.preview.boost.org

Becoming the new maintainer of Boost.Functional/Factory (value_factory and factory)
by Glen Fernandes 26 Aug '19

26 Aug '19

Tobias (see forwarded e-mail below) has kindly agreed to allow me to become the maintainer of boost::factory and boost::value_factory (in Boost.Functional). I'll be revising the implementation of both for the next Boost (1.72) release, to: * Support r-value arguments * Use variadic templates to support arbitrary arguments * Support allocators that are final * Support allocators that use non-raw (fancy) pointers * Support BOOST_NO_EXCEPTIONS environments * Improve compilation times (drop Boost.Preprocessor usage) I'll add myself to the appropriate repository teams and update the library information accordingly. Glen ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: T.Schwinger <tschwinger(a)isonews2.com> Date: Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 5:38 AM Subject: Re: Maintaining Boost.Functional value_factory and factory To: Glen Fernandes <glen.fernandes(a)gmail.com> Hi Glen, On 25.08.19 19:46, Glen Fernandes wrote: > I'd like to assume maintenance of factory/value_factory in > Boost.Functional. Among other things, update them to support r-value > references (when the compiler supports it), as well as simplify the > implementation for when the compiler supports variadic templates. > Along with other work going forward. [...] > If you have no objections let me know. No objections - to the contrary: I'm grateful. Thank you for taking care of it! Best, Toby

1 0

Compliance with Boost copyright and license guidelines
by pbristow＠hetp.u-net.com 23 Aug '19

23 Aug '19

Prompted by some recent discussion of Boost license and copyright info by the Debian package team, I have recently been checking on the Boost.Multiprecision library and run the Boost inspect program https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_70_0/tools/inspect/ (originally written by Beman Dawes in 2003 and revised several times since). I’ve made some minor cosmetic changes to the program and the rather sparse documentation to make it easier to use by library authors and give a bit more info. It checks on compliance with https://www.boost.org/development/requirements.html. It’s use has been a little neglected recently but I conclude that we are not doing well enough in providing the proof of copyright and license that we promise. The results of my run of inspect on the boost/lib folder using develop branch are not pretty Problem counts: 1790 files missing Boost license info or having wrong reference text 1682 files missing copyright notice (but not I suspect quite as bad as they look – some items probably do not need copyright and license). Now that the 1.71 release is out bar a little shouting, I wonder if we should focus on improving compliance for the next release? I’d like to propose 1 A boost/tools/inspect/develop branch to refine the inspect program a little and improve the documentation (I have done something on this already for my education and use). 2 Discussion of the bad results (zip attached) to try to find why there are so many reports and to decide what to do. 3 Encourage all authors to run inspect on their library locally and try to remedy the items missing. 4 I suspect that many libraries will have items missing but the authors are also missing. So someone from the community maintenance team will need to take over and make some decisions on what to do. Often just providing a copyright claim from the obvious author and Boost license will suffice? 5 Try to improve the compliance with other guidelines. For example. there are many libraries that are failing to prevent with min and max macros for what of a couple of brackets. Usually (std::numeric_limits<>::max)(). All these will trip up Windows users in a puzzling way. Please can we just fix these? Views? Paul PS My halo is shining brightly 😉 Boost.Multiprecision has a problem count of zero 😊 (and I’m working on Boost.Math) Boost Inspection Report Inspect version no 3.1.15 Run Date: 08:44:19 UTC, Saturday 17 August 2019 Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt) Copyright Boost 2019 boost-no-inspect Inspection from path "libs" including subfolders. Totals: 52355 files scanned 4351 directories scanned (including root) 3472 problems reported Problem counts: 1790 files missing Boost license info or having wrong reference text 1682 files missing copyright notice Worst Offenders: outcome 940 metaparse 556 polygon 228 python 194 beast 192 Summary: algorithm (4) array (2) asio (12) … Paul A. Bristow Prizet Farmhouse Kendal, Cumbria LA8 8AB UK

14 34

Re: [boost] crc.hpp:569 msvc warning C4800
by Kenneth Porter 22 Aug '19

22 Aug '19

This appears not to have made it into 1.71.0. I had to edit crc.hpp:569 to silence the warning. --On Saturday, April 13, 2019 1:35 PM -0700 Kenneth Porter via Boost <boost(a)lists.boost.org> wrote: > <https://github.com/boostorg/crc/pull/2> > > Visual Studio 2010-2019 issue this warning for crc.hpp line 569: > > warning C4800: "'int' : forcing value to bool 'true' or 'false' > (performance warning) > > bool const quotient = remainder & high_bit_mask; > > Replace with: > > bool const quotient = (remainder & high_bit_mask) != 0;

1 0

boost high precision timer and boost io_service
by JH 22 Aug '19

22 Aug '19

Hi, I am currently running boost::asio::deadline_timer to transmit data every minute, the requirement needs the interval accurate, if the first data sending at 10:00:05, the next needs be 10:01:05 and so on, but my data sending time shifting every 2 seconds I need to fix it. I am not sure if the boost high precision timer can fix it, it seems to me like a realtime requirement. My whole application is based on boost::asio::io_service in a single thread on Linux embedded system, can the boost high precision timer fix the problem or will the the boost multithreading fix the problem or there might be no chance to match the requirement simply because Linux is not a realtime OS? Appreciate your insight advice. Thank you. Kind regards, - jupiter

4 5

[release] Boost 1.71.0
by Michael Caisse 21 Aug '19

21 Aug '19

Release 1.71.0 of the Boost C++ Libraries is now available. These open-source libraries work well with the C++ Standard Library, and are usable across a broad spectrum of applications. The Boost license encourages both commercial and non-commercial use. This release contains 1 new library (Variant2) and numerous enhancements and bug fixes for existing libraries. For details, including download links, see <http://www.boost.org/users/news/version_1.71.0> You can also download directly from: <https://dl.bintray.com/boostorg/release/1.71.0/> To install this release on your system, see <http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/release/more/getting_started/index.html> Thanks to everyone who participated in this release. Thanks, -- The Boost Release Team Marshall Clow, Michael Caisse

3 2

[release] Boost 1.71.0 Release Candidate 2 available
by Michael Caisse 20 Aug '19

20 Aug '19

The release candidates for the 1.71.0 release are now available at: <https://dl.bintray.com/boostorg/release/1.71.0/source/> The SHA256 checksums are as follows: 1b3949ffddf56129141032542523920034f2e69775fb9332a52ba37c548dbf35 boost_1_71_0_rc2.7z d73a8da01e8bf8c7eda40b4c84915071a8c8a0df4a6734537ddde4a8580524ee boost_1_71_0_rc2.tar.bz2 96b34f7468f26a141f6020efb813f1a2f3dfb9797ecf76a7d7cbd843cc95f5bd boost_1_71_0_rc2.tar.gz 85a94ac71c28e59cf97a96714e4c58a18550c227ac8b0388c260d6c717e47a69 boost_1_71_0_rc2.zip As always, the release managers would appreciate it if you download the candidate of your choice and give building it a try. Please report both success and failure, and anything else that is noteworthy. -- The Boost Release Managers

5 6

Potential project: Resolving boost::chrono conflicts with std::chrono
by Howard Hinnant 20 Aug '19

20 Aug '19

Possible project for someone looking for a boost project to contribute to: boost::chrono was created soon after std::chrono was proposed and served people well for experimenting with this library prior to migrating to C++11. Fast forward 8 years: Now we have two competing chrono libraries: boost::chrono and std::chrono. And it is not rare for people to use non-chrono boost libraries, which in turn use boost::chrono, and for those same people to use std::chrono. Invariably what happens is they get horribly complicated compile-time errors which boil down to: boost::chrono does not interoperate with std::chrono. And these errors often come from deep within libraries which people are simply trying to use. The pitch: boost::chrono, and other boost::libs needs to defer to std::chrono for C++11 and later. This would make boost significantly easier to use. This is likely a multi-project effort, and I don’t even have a concrete strategy in mind. This is a problem in search of a solution, not vice-versa. And I often hear of enthusiastic people who want to jump in and lend a helping hand. I think this would be a terrific area to point such talent towards. Howard

13 27

Re: [boost] [multiprecision] Proposal for enhancing cpp_int multiplication
by kotika98 19 Aug '19

19 Aug '19

-------- Original message --------From: Ankur Dua via Boost <boost(a)lists.boost.org> Date: 17/08/2019 18:17 (GMT+08:00) To: boost(a)lists.boost.org Cc: Ankur Dua <ankurdua15(a)gmail.com> Subject: [boost] [multiprecision] Proposal for enhancing cpp_int multiplication We have benchmarked cpp_int vs mpz_int (GNU GMP backend) and we found thataround 10^6 bits, cpp_int is tremendously slow (almost 1200x times). Wehave also prepared a document containing the benchmarks [1] alongwith thedetails about the idea and the project.References,[1] Introductory document -https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cclKlbBWDVmY9zKSdn0ga2yTcCkyD9ZiUUdCZZkVyaI/edit?usp=sharing__________________________________________________________________________________ Nice idea for a project! In GMP, things are organized around thresholds for switching to the next algorithm. It is impossible to predict theoretically what that threshold will be or how it will evolve in the future with changes to computer architecture.1. However, for very large input, FFT dominates over Karatsuba and Toom. The threshold is around 4000 limbs which is roughly 250,000 bits. BTW, it is below your test limits.2. For most sizes in between 0 and 4000 limbs, Toom-8 dominates, not Karatsuba.3. Karatsuba and Toom are anyway both special cases of FFT.https://gmplib.org/manual/Multiplication-Algorithms.html#Multiplication…

1 0

I'm getting some neat results by changing graph testing over to using pre-compiled headers
by jrmarsha 18 Aug '19

18 Aug '19

Shout out to Rene Rivera for helping me get this stuff together. I'm getting some useful results out of changing to using pre-compiled headers. There isn't the speed-up I expected, but it has actually turned out useful for finding out incorrect header inclusion patterns and will certainly be making the code more reliable. This is something that we ought to consider trying more broadly in the project.

1 0

[multiprecision] Proposal for enhancing cpp_int multiplication
by Ankur Dua 18 Aug '19

18 Aug '19

Hi Boost community, We are team of two students (Senior Undergraduate) from IIT(ISM) Dhanbad — Madhur Chauhan & Ankur Dua. We want to bring your attention towards the the potential project that we wish to complete — Enhancing multplication of cpp_int by using Karatsuba as the multiplication algorithm. We have benchmarked cpp_int vs mpz_int (GNU GMP backend) and we found that around 10^6 bits, cpp_int is tremendously slow (almost 1200x times). We have also prepared a document containing the benchmarks [1] alongwith the details about the idea and the project. We are awaiting response from the community after which we will prepare a formal proposal containing the details of approach and possible implementations with documentation and test code changes. Thanks & Regards Madhur Chauhan & Ankur Dua madhur4127(a)gmail.com ankurdua15(a)gmail.com References, [1] Introductory document - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cclKlbBWDVmY9zKSdn0ga2yTcCkyD9ZiUUdCZZk…

2 1

Interest in updated, standalone iterator_facade library?
by Zach Laine 18 Aug '19

18 Aug '19

I write a lot of iterators, and I'm getting sick of doing it by hand. I can't use Boost.Iterator's iterator_facade in library code, since it knows nothing about constexpr and noexcept. The design of Boost.Iterator's iterator_facade does not lend itself very well to being modified in a direction that is standardization-friendly (reasons why are outlined in the online docs). So, here is one take on this problem: GitHub: https://github.com/tzlaine/iterator_facade Online Docs: https://tzlaine.github.io/iterator_facade For those unfamiliar with the problem, iterators are very simple, at the highest level of abstraction. An iterator's implementation does not reflect this -- it is highly repetitive and easy to get subtly wrong. This library fixes that. The library is forward-looking, since I intend to write WG21 papers to standardize iterator_facade; there is good support for upcoming C++20 library features. In particular, the iterators created with iterator_facade model the C++20 iterator concepts, and therefore do not necessarily match the requirements of the C++17-and-earlier requirement tables. I have not found this to affect the usability of iterator-facade-based iterators with pre-C++20 code. Something to note: there was a recent-ish attempt to stanrdize iterator_facade, which is now abandoned, P0186 (http://wg21.link/P0186) This was very different from what I'm proposing for Boost. I talked to Eric Niebler about this, and he favors a return to the CRTP-based approach of my lib and the original Boost.Iterator iterator_facade library. Zach

9 20

Interest in STL interface templates for iterators, views, and containers? (Was: Interest in updated, standalone iterator_facade library?)
by Zach Laine 17 Aug '19

17 Aug '19

On Wed, Aug 14, 2019 at 10:44 AM Zach Laine <whatwasthataddress(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, Aug 14, 2019 at 4:44 AM Hans Dembinski <hans.dembinski(a)gmail.com> > wrote: > > [snip] > > >> > Since iterator_interface is a lot more like Boost.Iterator's >> iterator_adaptor than my previous iterator_facade was (and I'll look into >> that), it may be possible to make one template that does everything, but I >> will not include two separate templates. >> >> If you could merge the two that would be even better, but I am not sure >> you can. >> > > I can, and I did last night. You can see an example here (not that this > is not the master branch): > > > https://github.com/tzlaine/iterator_facade/blob/interface_alternative/examp… > > When I get MSVC fixed, I'll merge all this to master. > This is now done. The focus of the library is now a bit different. All the iterator bits are still there, but now iterator_facade is called iterator_interface, and has facilities for acting more like an iterator_facade and more like an iterator_adaptor. One of the new things is an implementation of C++20's view_interface. Give it a range or view, even one with only begin() and end(), and it gives you all the view-type API that can be supported from begin() and end(), based on the iterator types and categories. The other new thing is container_interface. It is analogous to view_interface, but instead of supporting definition of new view types, it supports the definition of new containers. It has support for all the operations in the sequence container and reversible container requirements in the standard. In the example in the docs, I was able to write a static_vector, for which container_interface provided 38(!) of the member functions. Finally, the library's name has changed to reflect all this. You can now get the code here: https://github.com/tzlaine/stl_interfaces and see the online docs here: https://tzlaine.github.io/stl_interfaces/doc/html/index.html Zach

1 0

Beast/Context build failures
by Vinnie Falco 15 Aug '19

15 Aug '19

I'm seeing new build failures related to Boost.Context, could this be the recent changes there? <https://travis-ci.org/boostorg/beast/jobs/571029999> Thanks

3 2

Boost.Predef still broken in 1.71 RC 1
by Niall Douglas 13 Aug '19

13 Aug '19

As reported earlier, Boost.Build's predefined macro testing support is still misdetecting in RC 1: Using Boost 1.71 RC 1 with VS2019: b2 libs/outcome/test Performing configuration checks - default address-model : 32-bit - default architecture : x86 - !BOOST_COMP_GNUC : no - BOOST_COMP_GNUC >= 6.0 : no - !BOOST_COMP_CLANG : no - BOOST_COMP_CLANG >= 4.0 : no - Boost.Config Feature Check: cxx14_variable_templates : yes - Boost.Config Feature Check: cxx14_constexpr : yes - !BOOST_COMP_GNUC : no - BOOST_COMP_GNUC >= 6.0 : no - !BOOST_COMP_CLANG : no - BOOST_COMP_CLANG >= 4.0 : no - Boost.Config Feature Check: cxx14_variable_templates : yes - Boost.Config Feature Check: cxx14_constexpr : yes ...found 1 target... Using Boost 1.71 RC 1 with GCC 7.3 on Linux: g++ --version g++ (Ubuntu 7.3.0-27ubuntu1~18.04) 7.3.0 Copyright (C) 2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. ./b2 libs/outcome/test Performing configuration checks - !BOOST_COMP_GNUC : no - BOOST_COMP_GNUC >= 6.0 : no - !BOOST_COMP_CLANG : no - BOOST_COMP_CLANG >= 4.0 : no - default address-model : 64-bit - default architecture : x86 - Boost.Config Feature Check: cxx14_variable_templates : yes - Boost.Config Feature Check: cxx14_constexpr : yes - !BOOST_COMP_GNUC : no - BOOST_COMP_GNUC >= 6.0 : no - !BOOST_COMP_CLANG : no - BOOST_COMP_CLANG >= 4.0 : no - Boost.Config Feature Check: cxx14_variable_templates : yes - Boost.Config Feature Check: cxx14_constexpr : yes ...found 1 target...

2 2

Re: [boost] Potential project: Resolving boost::chrono conflicts with std::chrono
by Glen Fernandes 12 Aug '19

12 Aug '19

Howard wrote: > There is truth to this rationale, but I also wanted to point out that it is not absolute. > [snip] > Not providing a boost implementation does not preclude enhancing a std::lib. > But it can certainly help in changing existing signatures, Indeed. Of course, someone who wants to prototype some breaking change to a library like chrono or smart_ptr can do it without Boost. For example, we could have reimplemented ALL of shared_ptr in github/JohnDoe/smart_ptr to prototype the extensions added in C++17 and C++20. But here were some advantages of not doing so, and using Boost instead: - NOT reimplementing ALL of shared_ptr - Access to a bigger user base than github/JohnDoe/smart_ptr would have e.g. * Boost being white-listed as approved open source in many organizations * New versions of Boost included in many Linux distribution software repositories * etc. So it was an easy choice to go through Boost because boost::shared_ptr wasn't just an alias for std::shared_ptr, and had a quality, well tested, implementation. Still, even with Smart_Ptr, you have the option to convince the maintainer of Smart_Ptr to make boost::shared_ptr just an alias for [C++17] std::shared_ptr, and make boost::allocate_shared just defer to [C++20] std::allocate_shared. It would make users unhappy. There are already users of boost::local_shared_ptr which depends on the implementation of boost::shared_ptr, that would continue using Boost even after C++20 features are implemented everywhere. Glen

1 0

Re: [boost] Potential project: Resolving boost::chrono conflicts with std::chrono
by Glen Fernandes 12 Aug '19

12 Aug '19

There is value in Boost.Chrono providing a chrono implementation (i.e. not just aliasing std::chrono), to provide a library where future enhancements to chrono could eventually make it into C++23, or beyond. i.e. Similar to how we enhanced std::shared_ptr, std::make_shared, std::allocate_shared past the C++11 versions, and these enhancements made it into C++17 and C++20. Other Boost libraries can switch today to use std::chrono instead of boost::chrono (conditionally or unconditionally) if they want. As always: - It is, up to the maintainer of Boost.Chrono whether he wants to use std::chrono internally, and make boost::chrono compatible with std::chrono. - It is up to the maintainers of other Boost libraries whether they want to use std::chrono instead of boost::chrono Both of these can be achieved independently, purely by convincing the respective Boost maintainers. Maybe they can drop C++11 support and only support std::chrono. Maybe they might want to use boost::chrono in C++03 mode and std::chrono in C++11 mode. The discussion on the Boost mailing list (each time it gets repeated, for Boost.X library for which there is a C++ standard library equivalent) while still interesting, probably still won't achieve anything. i.e. No amount of discussion here is going to result in any action to command any maintainer to do something. Glen

2 1

[release] Boost 1.71.0 Release Candidate 1
by Michael Caisse 11 Aug '19

11 Aug '19

The first release candidates for the 1.71.0 release are now available at: <https://dl.bintray.com/boostorg/release/1.71.0.rc1/source/> The SHA256 checksums are as follows: 7fadf835372325d7a287b1c45310c4f96811eb1e4809933a5a400d529df38d0e boost_1_71_0_rc1.7z c857a86fb1223c7a256414151e2d1dcd4691b56197aa1329e087e92502191434 boost_1_71_0_rc1.tar.bz2 07c07cad079fed3f0175cbd7097740a333c2cdc6c899ac433dea87d1224d726d boost_1_71_0_rc1.tar.gz bc1674ba3e11635fc2effbddc2ed69aecaced3901f81a6a2aae7b77f34e4cf76 boost_1_71_0_rc1.zip As always, the release managers would appreciate it if you download the candidate of your choice and give building it a try. Please report both success and failure, and anything else that is noteworthy.

5 7

[asio][coroutine] Intentional synchronization of a single coroutine
by Jared McIntyre 10 Aug '19

10 Aug '19

Within a large asynchronous project, I have a coroutine that needs to synchronize with other calls to that coroutine. This is a very simplified (and somewhat silly) example: #include <iostream> #include <cstdlib> #include <chrono> #include <boost/asio.hpp> #include <boost/asio/spawn.hpp> using namespace std; using namespace std::chrono; using namespace std::placeholders; using namespace boost::asio; using namespace std::chrono_literals; io_service ioservice; void bottleneck(seconds duration, yield_context yield) { steady_timer delay_timer(ioservice); delay_timer.expires_after(duration); delay_timer.async_wait(yield); std::cout << duration.count() << " "; } int main() { spawn(ioservice, std::bind(&bottleneck, 3s, _1)); spawn(ioservice, std::bind(&bottleneck, 2s, _1)); spawn(ioservice, std::bind(&bottleneck, 1s, _1)); spawn(ioservice, std::bind(&bottleneck, 0s, _1)); ioservice.run(); } The output is, of course, 0 1 2 3 because the timer effectively acts to re-order the calls. What I need is a way for each call to bottleneck() to fully complete before the next one starts, and each call occurs in the order they were called. This would make the output 3 2 1 0. I also want to allow other asynchronous routines on the io_service to run when the coroutine is yielding (so no cheating and turning the delay timer into a sleep). I've tried to think through something like the following. But I have no idea how to make it work. yield_context_queue bottleneck_queue; void bottleneck(seconds duration, yield_context yield) { bool yield_time = !bottleneck_queue.empty() bottleneck_queue.push_back(yield); if( yield_time ) { yield_back; } steady_timer delay_timer(ioservice); delay_timer.expires_after(duration); delay_timer.async_wait(yield); std::cout << duration.count() << " "; bottleneck_queue.pop(); if( false == bottleneck_queue.empty() ) { ioservice.post(bottleneck_queue.peak()); } }

3 2

Re: [boost] [asio][coroutine] Intentional synchronization of a single coroutine
by Bjorn Reese 10 Aug '19

10 Aug '19

On 8/9/19 9:12 PM, Jared McIntyre via Boost wrote: > The output is, of course, 0 1 2 3 because the timer effectively acts to > re-order the calls. What I need is a way for each call to bottleneck() to > fully complete before the next one starts, and each call occurs in the > order they were called. This would make the output 3 2 1 0. I also want to > allow other asynchronous routines on the io_service to run when the > coroutine is yielding (so no cheating and turning the delay timer into a > sleep). This sounds like a job for Boost.Fiber and its Boost.Asio integration: https://www.boost.org/libs/fiber/doc/html/fiber/callbacks/then_there_s____b…

2 1

[release] master branch closes soon - check build status
by Michael Caisse 09 Aug '19

09 Aug '19

The master branch will be closing soon (in about 30-hours). Please check the build status of your library. <https://www.boost.org/development/tests/master/developer/summary.html> - Your Friendly Boost Release Team

4 6

[release] 1.71.0 closed for Beta
by Michael Caisse 09 Aug '19

09 Aug '19

The master branch is now closed for all changes except by permission for the Beta release. Also, remember to add your libraries' changes to the release notes at: <https://github.com/boostorg/website/blob/master/feed/history/boost_1_71_0.q…> Thanks, -- The Boost Release Team

1 0

Re: [boost] Potential project: Resolving boost::chrono conflicts with std::chrono
by Bjorn Reese 09 Aug '19

09 Aug '19

On 8/9/19 3:01 AM, Howard Hinnant via Boost wrote: > The pitch: boost::chrono, and other boost::libs needs to defer to std::chrono for C++11 and later. This would make This should be done with great care. Boost.Asio does exactly this for its timer classes -- use boost::chrono if compiled pre-C++11 and otherwise use std::chrono. As implemented, this is a pain from the users perspective, because the user has to pass a type-strong expiration parameter which can be either, say, std::chrono::seconds or boost::chrono::seconds. This means, that your code that works perfectly suddenly yields compilation errors when your users change the compiler flags. boost::asio::steady_timer timer; timer.expires_from_now(boost::chrono::seconds(5)); // Fails post C++03 The Boost.Asio way is to import all chrono symbols into its own namespace: boost::asio::steady_timer timer; timer.expires_from_now(boost::asio::chrono::seconds(5)); // Okay Another solution is to use the timer template classes, e.g. basic_waitable_timer instead of steady_timer, so the user can work around the problem by selecting whether to use std::chrono or boost::chrono: boost::asio::basic_waitable_timer<boost::chrono::steady_clock> timer; timer.expires_from_now(boost::chrono::seconds(5)); // Okay PS: I am not arguing for or against the project, nor am I recommending any particular solution. I am just sharing some experience.

2 1

Result of out_ptr review.
by Zach Laine 07 Aug '19

07 Aug '19

I've compiled the results of the reviews of out_ptr during its recent review. Unfortunately, out_ptr is NOT ACCEPTED, though many of the reviewers indicated interest in seeing it come back in some future form. I counted these formal reviews: Andrey Semashev: reject Louis Dionne: accept David Sankel: reject Phil Endecott: reject Glen Fernandes: reject Gavin Lambert: reject Thanks to all of the above reviewers, and to all those who contributed to the ongoing discussions surrounding out_ptr, even if they did not have time for a full review. Points against out_ptr raised during the review: - Many reviewers indicated their puzzlement that this library was proposed at all, since they had never seen enough calls to C APIs in their own code to motivate the need for out_ptr. - Some reviewers who did find the motivating cases of the library compelling, still said that they would prefer to write wrappers instead of using something like out_ptr. - Multiple reviewers want the library to provide error-reporting help (it currently does not). In particular, for c_func(out_ptr(p)), there was a concern about whether p is assigned a value, when c_func() returns a failure-status. - There was concern from several reviewers about the fact that out_ptr's types' dtors may throw, though this is only limited to the use of out_ptr with shared_ptr and similar smart pointers. In particular, non-unique_ptr uses will never throw in out_ptr's types' dtors, unless the user provides a throwing deleter. - Multiple reviewers disagreed with the use of template specialization as a customization mechanism. - There was widespread concern about the use of potentially UB-invoking tricks to get max performance out of the implementation. - Many reviewers wanted a more typical Boost tutorial introduction in the documentation. Now please permit me a digression. The library attempts to take a call that looks like this (simplest call possible): // CASE 0 foo * new_foo; TODO if (!create_foo(&new_foo)) { // etc. ... } And turn it into something as close as possible to this: // CASE 1 std::unique_ptr<foo> new_foo; if (!create_foo(new_foo)) { // etc. ... } out_ptr does a great job of this lexically: // CASE 2 std::unique_ptr<foo> new_foo; if (!create_foo(out_ptr(new_foo))) { // etc. ... } If you have not written thousands of lines of code that look like case 0, stop for a second and consider what it would be like to drop those thousands of raw pointers into your code, and how much you would like to replace them all with unique_ptrs. Now consider what it would take you to write all the wrapping functions necessary to make those thousands of calls look like case 1. You may make tooling to generate the wrappers, and that's time consuming. Writing it by hand is even more so. out_ptr also has the nice property that using it as I have above with unique_ptr does not change the meaning of the code, except to ensure that new_foo is guaranteed to be treated in a RAII manner. Thus we get increased exception safety, memory leak mitigation, etc. -- y'know, all that RAII stuff. If out_ptr is implemented well, case 2 should produce nearly identical object code to case 0, except that case 2 handles calling new_foo's dtor at the right time. Note that because of this, you have the same relationship to the C API in all three cases. That is, you need to check for the success value returned from create_foo(), and you need to know what create_foo()'s contract is in the face of errors -- did it write to new_foo or not? out_ptr is how you get from raw pointers to RAII ones, not how you solve all programming problems related to calling functions. Hopefully that motivates the use case for out_ptr, even if you don't need it in your own code. Hopefully that also allays concerns that out_ptr is not doing enough -- doing more is outside the library's scope. Now, on to exceptions in out_ptr's types' dtors. I heard a lot of discussion about this during the review. To me, concerns about what happens when an out_ptr or an inout_ptr throws in its dtor misses the point entirely, because it is concerned with fixing corner cases we should not even care to support. Instead of worrying about the semantics of exceptions in those kinds of situations, we should instead be asking why we want to support user code like this: ... } catch { create_foo(in_out_ptr(my_shared_ptr_to_a_foo)); ... } In other words, we don't really care about the dtor exceptions, unless: - there is an active exception already, and - we are also calling a C API to create a new object (a possible, but certainly atypical thing to do when handling an exception), and - we're catching this new object in a shared_ptr-like smart pointer that might throw on construction. Who writes code like that? Few people, perhaps none. It's not impossible to see code like that, but until there are well-motivated cases for this, maybe leave it for a later version of the library. In other words, the question should have been "Why support anything other than nothrow-constructible RAII types like unque_ptr?" Note that I find this argument compelling for the WG21-facing version of this work too. To summarize: I think the first four bullet points listed at the beginning of this post are, or could easily be made to be, irrelevant. So, that leaves some issues still outstanding: - figure out how to provide customization points (I'm actually fine with the current approach...), - eliminate the UB-dangerous code, or make it opt-in, - rework the tutorial portion of the docs, and - many assorted doc cleanups. That does not seem like an unreasonable amount of stuff to resolve in post-review acceptance readiness. I bring all this up because I do in fact hope that JeanHeyd brings this back for a future review, and I hope that my arguments here will convince some of you that this library is a useful thing to have around. I waited until now to say any of these things in an attempt to remain impartial during the review; I've been bothered by seeing previous review managers clearly represent a pro-acceptance position from the start. Thanks to JeanHeyd for his submission. A no-vote from this group is a tough thing, and I hope that the feedback he has received takes some of the sting out. Zach

6 5

[asio][coroutine] forbid_suspend blocks
by Vinícius dos Santos Oliveira 07 Aug '19

07 Aug '19

I've implemented a dumb linter using Python + clang API that allows you to mark certain blocks as “atomic in respect to coroutines” using C++11 attributes. Usage example follows: void f() { int yield; g(yield); [[bt::forbid_suspend]] { // Comment this call to make linter accept the code g(yield); t(); } } You can change bt::forbid_suspend to another identifier by tuning settings on the beginning of the script. The prefix forbid was inspired by Rust's linters[1] as you cannot disallow the linter from inside the forbid_suspend block. Some limitations follow: - A suspend point is identified by looking references to any id equals to yield in the last argument passed to function calls. It means that yield[ignored_ec] and alike will be correctly identified, but it needs to be named yield and it needs to be the last argument to the function call. - I haven't found a way to extract attributes related to COMPOUND_STMT nodes with clang API, so I manually look for token gaps and do a simple regex. It means you cannot use macros to [[bt::forbid_suspend]] as the macro won't be expanded. - You better call the script with '-x c++' and also ' -I/usr/lib/clang/5.0.1/include'. Like I've said in the beginning of the email, it's a *dumb* linter, which means it doesn't try to handle all cases. Therefore, I don't hope to do many changes to it or maintain it to work against newer releases of clang and I'm only uploading it to gist (not fullblow Github): < https://gist.github.com/vinipsmaker2/d930fbe5b7597432b021effe618da171>. It should also be easy to hack as it is very small. I'm releasing the linter under public domain. Enjoy. I have been using fibers in a daily basis on the last months of my job to solve networking problems on a gateway project. Some of the technologies I use are: - Boost.Asio and its spawn function. - A few custom synchronization primitives for the fibers (e.g. mutex, semaphore). - Eventually I'll have to write a custom spawn function that returns a joinable handle so I can kill the usage of a fiber::barrier in a few places. I've been using the linter for about a week already and looks fine. My use case are: - To prevent iterator invalidation in regions accessing shared variables. - To guarantee events order in algorithms that handle races (cannot yield while task YYY hasn't finished). The project I use it in is not an open source project, so I cannot talk much more about it. Also, I don't claim my solution is original. I wouldn't be surprised if the very same solution exists in the wild (please let me know if you know of a similar approach). This is not a new problem. It is know for some time. For instance, in P0171, Gor Nishanov noted this same problem: “In coroutines the suspend point is clearly marked with await, which tells the reader that something unusual happens in this function and allows the reader, for example, to confirm whether the lifetimes of the objects of interest align with the lifetime of the coroutine or not, whether some locks need to be acquired to protect some concurrently accessed data, and whether some locks need to be released before the execution reaches the suspend point.” — <http://open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2015/p0171r0.html>, 2015 However, the solution he presented was to manually examine whole blocks of code without help from the compiler. I argue that the solution he presented is as error-prone as manually looking for exit paths that don't free acquired resources in languages lacking RAII. And I've been spoiled too much by RAII. Furthermore, I take this comment of his with highly suspicious look: “Since we are on the subject of maintenance nightmares, we would like to offer a conjecture that the absence of the await in P0114 is a likely source of many maintenance nightmares. Without a syntactic marker to signal to the person reading the code that something funny is going on, it is impossible to tell whether the following code is correct or not” — http://open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2015/p0171r0.html If I had to give a vote to the proposal he was defending or Chris' proposal, I'd probably have chosen Chris'. [1] https://doc.rust-lang.org/reference/attributes.html# lint-check-attributes -- Vinícius dos Santos Oliveira https://vinipsmaker.github.io/

2 3

Making copyright holders easier to parse
by Giovanni Mascellani 07 Aug '19

07 Aug '19

Dear Boost developers, I am one of the Debian developers maintaining the Boost package in Debian. As part of packaging policy, we want the copyright status of each file in Debian packages to be documented, which includes at least the name of the copyright holders and the license of that particular file. As you can believe, this is rather complicated for Boost, since there are a lot of files with many copyright holders. I started to use the tool bcp, which among other things is able to collect such copyright information. My clone is available here[1]. However, bcp often is confused by the inconsistent style of how copyright holders are listed in different files, so it required a lot a manual fixing. For example, sometimes copyright years are written before the name, sometimes after, sometimes they're absent; names are sometimes separated by commas, sometimes by newlines, maybe even sometimes by nothing. Sometimes there are spelling mistakes or casing inconsistencies between names, or inconsistent institutions' names. Bcp has some complicated regular expression to overcame all these differences, but the result is brittle at its best. [1] https://salsa.debian.org/gio/boost-copyright Since I am doing this manual work anyway, I might as well update the Boost files so that their copyright headers are more consistent and easy to parse, and then I could submit you patches for having them fixed in the Boost official repositories. My question is: are you interested in this kind of patches? Of course I would still go through the ordinary patch submission procedure. I am just asking if this kind of patches would be well received or not. To better illustrate what I mean, let me consider a few examples (the chosen files are completely random); file libs/log/include/boost/log/exceptions.hpp currently has: > /* > * Copyright Andrey Semashev 2007 - 2015. > * Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. > * (See accompanying file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at > * http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt) > */ I might change this to: > /* > * Copyright: 2007-2015 Andrey Semashev > * License: Boost Software License, Version 1.0 > * (See accompanying file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at > * http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt) > */ File libs/atomic/include/boost/atomic/fences.hpp has: > /* > * Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. > * (See accompanying file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at > * http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt) > * > * Copyright (c) 2011 Helge Bahmann > * Copyright (c) 2013 Tim Blechmann > * Copyright (c) 2014 Andrey Semashev > */ I might change this to: > /* > * Copyright: 2011 Helge Bahmann > * Copyright: 2013 Tim Blechmann > * Copyright: 2014 Andrey Semashev > * License: Boost Software License, Version 1.0 > * (See accompanying file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at > * http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt) > */ I hope these examples illustrate my intention. I think that having more easily parsable copyright holders could be useful for Debian, for Boost and for Boost adopters which should properly care about the licensing of the libraries they use. Thank you, Giovanni. -- Giovanni Mascellani <g.mascellani(a)gmail.com> Postdoc researcher - Université Libre de Bruxelles

14 23