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[release] Is everyone ready for the 1.72.0 release (cycle)?
by Marshall Clow 21 Oct '19

21 Oct '19

We're getting ready to start the release cycle. People should be familiar with the milestones. They're on the calendar at https://www.boost.org/development/ The first two milestones are: 23-Oct: Boost 1.72.0 closed for new libraries and breaking changes 30-Oct: Boost 1.72.0 closed for major changes -- Marshall

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[Exception] PR #24 passes CI tests
by dariomt＠gmail.com 21 Oct '19

21 Oct '19

Hi, PR #24 [1] at last passes all CI tests. It should solve Issue #10 [2]. I'd like to ask for it to be reviewed and merged. I'm hopeful we can get it into the 1.72 release. Regards, Dario PS: thanks to pdimov for suggesting how to fix the Travis configuration [1] https://github.com/boostorg/exception/pull/24 [2] https://github.com/boostorg/exception/issues/10

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Re: [boost] Adding my sorting algorithm, ska_sort to boost
by Malte Skarupke 20 Oct '19

20 Oct '19

Thanks for the replies. I finished a first pass of the documentation, tests, and other work of including my algorithm in boost and uploaded it here: https://github.com/skarupke/sort/tree/master I also re-ran all the single threaded benchmarks and updated the documentation. For the big O complexity: I am actually still not quite sure what it is. I used similar notation to what spreadsort uses. I think O(n*key_length) is correct for the worst case, but for long keys (like when sorting long strings) the algorithm may fall back to comparison based sorting, so I used the same thing as spreadsort: min(O(n log n), O(n key_length)). For speed: ska_sort should be the fastest sorting algorithm even for small numbers of items. I included three graphs of benchmarks, for sorting ints, floats and strings: https://github.com/skarupke/sort/blob/master/doc/images/sorting_ints.png https://github.com/skarupke/sort/blob/master/doc/images/sorting_strings.png https://github.com/skarupke/sort/blob/master/doc/images/sorting_floats.png For ints and strings ska_sort is always fastest, for floats pdqsort is briefly faster, but starting at N >= 128 ska_sort is faster. Part of the work of this new version of ska_sort was to make radix sort really fast even for small N. Before I would use std::sort for any small array of less than 128 items. Now that cutoff is at 32 items, so I skip straight to insertion sort and never do std::sort. The biggest effect of this change is that it removes the "waves" from the benchmark graph, like we still see for spreadsort in the above picture. I used to also have those when I gave a talk about this algorithm. Now the graph is much more smooth. (this also confuses my answer to the question "what is the big O complexity of this algorithm?" Because the O(n*b) answer that I gave in my talk was justified by the presence of the waves) The biggest questions I have at this point are around the interface. I reworked that completely so that even relatively advanced use cases are now pretty straightforward. I don't think that anyone else will ever need to use those advanced features, so I kept the documentation of them small, choosing instead to focus on the common use cases. And I made sure to give lots of examples of converting existing comparison-based sorting examples to my interface. Oh and for the big point of a parallel version of this algorithm: At this point I have no idea how to do that. I haven't even begun to look into parallel algorithms. The current version was a lot of work already. I think that'll have to be a project for another time. (it's definitely appealing though since currently the sorted algorithms are only 2.4 times as fast as ska_sort on a machine with 8 cores/16 hyper threads in benchmark_numbers.cpp, so even a little bit of parallelism would beat the existing algorithms...) Francisco, since you'll be busy in the near term it sounds like I can't expect too much response for another month, but I would really appreciate it if you could look at it a little just to see if anything obvious stands out to you that I can work on while I wait. (otherwise no biggie, I understand how hard it can be to find time for maintaining projects, since that is exactly one of the reasons why I want to get this into boost...) Thanks, Malte -- Malte Skarupke malteskarupke(a)fastmail.fm > Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2019 13:24:06 +0200 > From: Francisco Jos? Tapia <fjtapia(a)gmail.com> > To: boost(a)lists.boost.org > Subject: Re: [boost] Adding my sorting algorithm, ska_sort to boost > Message-ID: > <CADBNGqQJpHux3AdRJON-nh76BaouRn1FRO4_LrMR76TywmCH+g(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" > > Hi Malte, > I am Francisco Tapia, one of the co-authors of the Sort library. > We will examine your algorithm. But we must examine the internal parts of > the algorithm, and evaluate the correctness of the algorithm, how is > implemented the worst case and a couple of details. After, we check the > speed with the benchmarks used in the library, with several sets of data. > Since the near sorted to the fully unsorted, and from the single numbers to > structs with heavy comparison functions. > > Now, I am overburdened by work, and I can't revise until December. But we > will do and provide to you a reasoned response, and according to it, decide > the inclusion or not in the library. > As commented by Phil Endecott, the most interesting now is the parallel > algorithms. Today, we don't have any parallel algorithm based on radix sort > or any other hybrid algorithm. > Because with small sets of data the differences are insignificant. But when > you have big sets of data, use parallel algorithms, and then, the new > single thread algorithms are in the middle, in the no man's land. > > If you have any doubt or question, contact me, and I will try to answer you. > > El mar., 15 oct. 2019 a las 23:06, Kostas Savvidis via Boost (< > boost(a)lists.boost.org>) escribi?: > > > > > > On Oct 13, 2019, at 03:06, Malte Skarupke via Boost < > > boost(a)lists.boost.org> wrote: > > > > > > Hi, > > > a couple of years ago I wrote a generalized version of radix sort, > > called ska_sort. I gave a talk about it at CppNow, available here: > > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqs87a_7zxw > > > > > > I have a new version of that algorithm that is both faster and more > > general. I can now sort almost anything. For example when I gave the talk I > > couldn't sort a std::vector<std::list<int>> because std::list doesn't have > > a random access interface, but now that works. (and it's faster than > > sorting the same thing with std::sort) > > > > > > > This seems like a product of a large investment of effort. > > The big advantage over any previously available radix_sort > > is the ability to sort almost any datatype if a key maps to an integer > > somehow. > > Plus, an advantage in measured practical speed, and apparently no claims > > about Big O improvement. > > > > The average performance is O(n*b) where b is unknown and/or dependent on n > > ? > > > > Is the theoretical worst-case O(n^2) ? Why? Is it because of working > > in-place? > > (yes, I understand you fall back to std::sort if you hit this case) > > > > Is this software/algorithm fully documented? - I mean by another way than > > reading the source code. > > > > Maybe too many questions at once, but it was not clear after watching your > > talk at cppcon and the blog posts. > > > > Cheers, > > Kostas > > > > <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz1KZXbghj8> > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Unsubscribe & other changes: > > http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Subject: Digest Footer >

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constexpr for boost::endian
by Gero Peterhoff 20 Oct '19

20 Oct '19

Hello developer, can you implement constexpr support for boost::endian? And i'm missing support for (compiler-dependent) int128 (boost::u/int128_type). thx Gero

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Adding my sorting algorithm, ska_sort to boost
by Malte Skarupke 20 Oct '19

20 Oct '19

Hi, a couple of years ago I wrote a generalized version of radix sort, called ska_sort. I gave a talk about it at CppNow, available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqs87a_7zxw I have a new version of that algorithm that is both faster and more general. I can now sort almost anything. For example when I gave the talk I couldn't sort a std::vector<std::list<int>> because std::list doesn't have a random access interface, but now that works. (and it's faster than sorting the same thing with std::sort) I've also made it much easier to extend the algorithm with your own types. It was always easy if your type isn't too complicated, but now even weird types like std::variant are pretty easy to add. In my old version I had to go deep into the guts to add support for std::variant, now it's easy enough to do that that I'll add it to the documentation. I'm thinking of releasing the new version in boost, mainly so that it will be used more widely and so that it can be kept working in the long term. Since this is a long weekend in the US, I will try to as much of the work as possible this weekend. I'm currently trying to figure out how the boost documentation works (I saw that there are quickbook files in Boost.Sort, but how do I run the build for it?) and I've already made good progress on cleaning up my code and making it use the boost::sort namespace. Before I go any further I wanted to ask though: Does boost want my sorting algorithm? This would essentially deprecate spreadsort since this one is faster and more general and easier to use. To convince you that this is worth adding, I ran the benchmark that is included in the Boost.Sort source code. On random numbers here is how long all the algorithms took: std::sort: 9.04 pdqsort: 4.65 std::stable_sort: 11.57 spinsort: 5.42 flat_stable_sort: 7.26 spreadsort: 4.41 ska_sort: 2.00 There are a lot more bencmarks in the Boost.Sort code, and in general the results are this: If the data is already sorted or mostly sorted, other algorithms are faster, but if there are no easy patterns, ska_sort is always fastest. (I was going to include the entire table in this email, but the formatting breaks. I can attach all the results separately if anyone is interested) The Boost.Sort code also has benchmarks for sorting "objects" and "strings" and the results are similar there: On random data ska_sort is always fastest. I think this new version would be great in boost. It's not every day that a new sorting algorithm comes along that's literally twice as fast as what we had before. If we want this in boost, what would the next steps be? From the "submission process" document it sounds like there will be several stages of "Refinement" for the code. (or should this go through the Boost Library Incubator?) After I figure out how the documentation works I can upload a first version of this to github. (I want to get the documentation working so that we can talk about the interface) Let me know what you think, Malte -- Malte Skarupke malteskarupke(a)fastmail.fm

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[SPAM] [preprocessor][vmd] Updates to the preprocessor and vmd libraries
by Edward Diener 19 Oct '19

19 Oct '19

The C++20 preprocessor construct __VA_OPT__ has the additional affect of providing the ability to write a general purpose macro for testing emptiness, ie. no preprocessor tokens, in C++ macro programming that is 100% reliable for any preprocessor data passed to it. Previously such a macro testing for emptiness always had some corner cases where the test might fail with a preprocessor error, but in C++20 mode at least the test can now be completely reliable in all cases. So I have added two macros along with documentation, as well as a topic discussing emptiness, to the Boost PP library. The first macro is called BOOST_PP_VARIADIC_OPT, invoked with no parameters as BOOST_PP_VARIADIC_OPT(), which expands to 1 if the compiler is in C++20 mode, supports variadic macros, and supports the C++ 20 __VA_OPT__ construct, and otherwise expands to 0. The second macro, which only exists if BOOST_PP_VARIADIC_OPT() expands to 1, is called BOOST_PP_CHECK_EMPTY. This second macro is a variadic macro which takes a single parameter of variadic data, and expands to 1 if the data is empty or expands to being empty, while otherwise expanding to 0 if the data is not empty. Furthermore in the Boost VMD library I have updated the BOOST_VMD_IS_EMPTY macro to essentially invoke the BOOST_PP_CHECK_EMPTY macro when BOOST_PP_VARIADIC_OPT() expands to 1, while retaining the current processing when that is not the case. As well I have updated the VMD discussion of emptiness in the documentation of Boost VMD to include information about the ability to provide a 100% reliable test for emptiness in C++20. Neither change in Boost PP or Boost VMD should affect any end-user or Boost library in any way. There are tests for all these changes and all tests have passed. I will update the release notes for Boost PP and Boost VMD for the next release of Boost with this information. As always any comments, questions, or criticism of these changes are always welcome.

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Warning from Boost.Exception
by pbristow＠hetp.u-net.com 17 Oct '19

17 Oct '19

Using Clang 9 on Windows b2 toolset-clang-linux cxxstd=2a . I am seeing lots of these warnings In file included from ..\..\..\boost/test/included/unit_test.hpp:23: In file included from ..\..\..\boost/test/impl/execution_monitor.ipp:37: In file included from ..\..\..\boost/exception/diagnostic_information.hpp:11: ..\..\..\boost/exception/info.hpp:134:21: warning: delete called on non-final 'boost::exception_detail::error_info_container_impl' that has virtual functions but non-virtual destructor [-Wdelete-non-abstract-non-virtual-dtor] delete this; ^ It seems that trying to supress is ineffective with -Wno-delete-non-abstract-non-virtual-dtor Perhaps by design? https://releases.llvm.org/9.0.0/tools/clang/docs/DiagnosticsReference.html#… te-non-abstract-non-virtual-dtor -Wdelete-non-abstract-non-virtual-dtor <https://releases.llvm.org/9.0.0/tools/clang/docs/DiagnosticsReference.html> Diagnostic text: warning: delete destructor called on non-final B that has virtual functions but non-virtual destructor -Wdelete-non-virtual-dtor <https://releases.llvm.org/9.0.0/tools/clang/docs/DiagnosticsReference.html> Some of the diagnostics controlled by this flag are enabled by default. Controls -Wdelete-abstract-non-virtual-dtor <https://releases.llvm.org/9.0.0/tools/clang/docs/DiagnosticsReference.html> , -Wdelete-non-abstract-non-virtual-dtor <https://releases.llvm.org/9.0.0/tools/clang/docs/DiagnosticsReference.html> . Should I be concerned about this? Paul Paul A. Bristow Prizet Farmhouse Kendal, Cumbria LA8 8AB UK

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[Math] float16 on ARM
by Phil Endecott 16 Oct '19

16 Oct '19

Hi, There seems to be support for 16-bit floats on iOS, when using Apple's XCode clang. This seems to be a storage-only format with the only instruction set support being conversions to and from 32- and 64-bit floats. Quick test: #if __ARM_FP & 2 #warning "Have 16-bit FP" #endif void test() { __fp16 a = 1.234; static_assert(sizeof(a)==2); __fp16 b = 2.345; auto sum = a+b; static_assert(sizeof(sum)==4); } There doesn't seem to be a std::numeric_limits specialisation. I suspect that other platforms have something similar. It would be good to have a boost::float16_t typedef and a portable feature-test macro (and maybe a software fallback). As far as I can see, boost/math/cstdfloat/cstdfloat_types.hpp checks the sizes of float, double and long double, and checks for 128-bit floats provided by the compiler. Can this be extended to check for __fp16 ? (P.S. it seems that gcc also has support, see https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Half-Precision.html ) Cheers, Phil.

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Does boost asio ssl support sslv3?
by JH 15 Oct '19

15 Oct '19

Hi, I've been running boost asio socket and sslv2 for many months, it works very well: server.cpp ontext_(boost::asio::ssl::context::sslv23) context_.set_options(boost::asio::ssl::context::default_workarounds | boost::asio::ssl::context::no_sslv2 | boost::asio::ssl::context::single_dh_use); context_.set_password_callback(boost::bind(&Server::get_password, this)); context_.use_certificate_chain_file("ssl/server.pem"); context_.use_private_key_file("ssl/server.pem", boost::asio::ssl::context::pem); context_.use_tmp_dh_file("ssl/dh2048.pem"); on client.cpp boost::asio::ssl::context context(boost::asio::ssl::context::sslv23); Recently we changed a nodejs server nodejs which using sslv3, the client failed to connect to server sslv3: Failed handshake: sslv3 alert handshake failure Any tips how to fix sslv3 handshake failure? Thank you. Kind regards, - jh

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Cryptic Boost.Build error (help required!)
by John Maddock 14 Oct '19

14 Oct '19

Can anyone see what's wrong here: https://github.com/boostorg/regex/issues/89 ? The reduced test case is: |./b2 -sICU_PATH="/opt/some/path" -sICU_LINK="-L/opt/some/path/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu -licuuc -licudata -licui18n" toolset=gcc-8 -n --with-filesystem --with-log Many thanks, John. | -- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus

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