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Boost.Graph security issues
by Jeremy Murphy 13 Apr '24

13 Apr '24

Dear Boost community, I've recently received a few security issue notifications from both the Google Chrome fuzzer project and Shielder (part of an OSTIF project), and basically I'm not sure how much to worry about them. I don't have time to fix them (but I can review and merge fixes), and I don't know how to draw attention to the need to fix them without publicizing the issues (which are still not published). It all depends on how many people actually are exposed via Boost.Graph and to what severity, right? I have no idea, but my gut tells me not many, as most Boost.Graph users I hear about are just using it internally, not exposing the interfaces to input from the Internet. But I'm not a security expert, that's why I'm asking you. What should I do? Thanks, cheers. Jeremy

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Re: [boost] Boost C++ in Australia
by Jeremy Murphy 13 Apr '24

13 Apr '24

Hi David, Hello from Sydney, at least for the next six months. I'd love to catch up, although finding time is hard. Cheers. Jeremy On Wed, 3 Apr 2024, 8:05 am David Bellot via Boost, <boost(a)lists.boost.org> wrote: > Hi all, > > reading through the Boost mailing list, I've realized several of you live > in the country of kangaroos and cute koalas (and great white sharks and > funnel web spiders too, thinking of it). > > As I am too, why don't we find a good opportunity to gather, hoping that > we're in the same city. If it's not the case, then chances are we are > "just" a few thousands kilometers away from each other! > > Let me know what you think > > Cheers, > David > > _______________________________________________ > Unsubscribe & other changes: > http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost >

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Technical Excellence?
by Vinnie Falco 12 Apr '24

12 Apr '24

I guess I'm confused. My understanding is that libraries are considered good candidates for the Boost collection based on meeting some or all of certain criteria: * They offer useful, novel functionality not found elsewhere * The API is superior to other libraries that do similar things * The implementation is exceptionally performant * Solving a familiar problem in a particularly elegant fashion * The library is already popular and has field experience * The library offers C++ standard functionality for older compilers But some of the chatter on the mailing list suggests that the bar for a Boost library candidate is lower. That a library just needs to basically work, even if it duplicates functionality found elsewhere, or even if it does not have anything that one might hold up as an example of exceptional engineering. Boost libraries used to be cutting edge, to such an extent that they were adopted into the C++ Standard. And now the progress is in reverse. The Standard introduces a new component, and the Boost library follows (Boost.Charconv for example). In other cases I see libraries with few to no users limping into reviews, or absent discussions which question whether or not the bar for excellence is exceeded. When I used to participate in wg21 I complained about the "direct to standard" pipeline, where people would just write papers for the sake of it with no example code or real-world user experience. I have to wonder if we are not cultivating a "direct to Boost" pipeline by having relaxed or poorly-defined acceptance criteria. There are thousands of open-source libraries for doing things in a fashion that is "good enough." If libraries are not held to technical excellence and high standards during the review process then what is the value proposition of the collection? If libraries of average design and implementation are seen as passable for acceptance then how would this inspire any authors to strive for excellence? When I write a library there are always two factors in my mind: 1. that the use-case is compelling, and 2. that I can bring something to the table which demonstrates technical excellence. These are the libraries that I have contributed thus far and my process for designing them: 1. Boost.Beast This offers something never seen before which is a generic approach to HTTP and Websocket, based on Asio, which offers models and algorithms that are designed well (of course, it still has its flaws). The library already had many users ahead of the review, and was being used to transact economic value in a live product. I will note that my initial motivation for Beast was because the websocketpp library API was just terrible, and the alternatives even worse. 2. Boost.JSON When I needed JSON I looked at the alternatives and while RapidJSON was clearly the best in terms of performance I felt that it made several major design flaws in its API. Boost.JSON pretty much copies all of the good ideas from RapidJSON especially the performant implementation, and offers a redesigned API that follows C++ best practices with respect to copy and move, exceptions, and error codes. Furthermore I added the streaming parser and I introduced a novel means of managing memory resources which I believe corrects a design flaw in the standard. This library already had commercial users and lots of feedback before going into review. 3. Boost.URL Beast users regularly asked for URL parsing. There are some regex patterns floating around and some Spirit based parsers, and also some URL libraries that do the "five std::string data members" thing. I wanted something excellent, but the first two iterations of an API turned out to be crap and I gave up, as I do not like publishing mediocre libraries. Some time passed and with renewed energy I tried again and then I got it right. The URL is stored in its serialized form (just one string), allowing the possibility for having a url_view type in addition to the mutable container. I copied much of the API from a popular JS URL lib because, well hey why duplicate the effort if someone has already gone through the trouble :) Boost.URL offers particularly clean and robust interfaces for reading and modifying the values of each part of the URL both with and without the URL-encoding applied. The mechanism for lazily iterating the path and query sequences is novel. And it offers a strong invariant: the container will always contain a valid URL. The library further innovates by making public its parsing framework which is optimized for the type of grammars found in the Internet RFCs such as HTTP and the fields used in Websocket handshakes. Boost.URL had a bunch of users before the review was conducted. 4. Boost.StaticString This one is just a straightforward string container whose storage is fixed in capacity as a data member. Container libraries are often unexciting but they are necessary. StaticString follows all best practices for modern C++ containers. When I look at a proposed library I try to figure out what is great about it, how well it performs for its users (or even, does it have any users?), what part of the API is exceptionally well designed and ergonomic, but most importantly I want to ask: what makes this library stand out to the extent that it should be part of the library collection? What aspects of the library, if viewed by someone learning C++ or interested in improving their design skills, are inspirational? Is this overly demanding or exclusionary? Am I overthinking things? Should we be asking more of these types of questions and requiring better answers? What is the criteria for determining if a library is good enough to become part of the collection? Thanks

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On Boost and modules
by Ruben Perez 12 Apr '24

12 Apr '24

Hi all, Following a recent conversation on the possibility to somehow enable Boost to be consumed using C++20 modules, I've jumped in and done a small research: https://anarthal.github.io/cppblog/modules René posted the link to r/cpp and it seems to have attracted some interest (https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/1bxggim/c20_modules_and_boost_an_anal…) It looks like a small fraction of users would consider consuming Boost as modules if there was the possibility (note that considering here is pretty far from actually doing it). Nevertheless, I'd like to know everyone's opinion on the subject. If we find a way to overcome the technical challenges that I manifest in the article, do you think a set of non-intrusive "module bindings" allowing users to consume Boost as a module could add any value to Boost? Thanks, Ruben.

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Re: [boost] [release] Boost 1.85.0 Release Candidate 2 is available
by Glen Fernandes 11 Apr '24

11 Apr '24

I wrote: > I think we saw this before, but I couldn't figure it out: > https://github.com/boostorg/boost/issues/884 Many thanks to Sam Darwin for finding the cause (and looking into a long term solution in the new website release mechanism). Glen

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[release] Boost 1.85.0 Release Candidate 2 is available
by Marshall Clow 11 Apr '24

11 Apr '24

The second release candidates for the 1.85.0 release are now available at: <https://boostorg.jfrog.io/artifactory/main/release/1.85.0/source/> The SHA256 checksums are as follows: 06bdbef025de63a22baf997d49d34f38455975529ee05ab73379338e572d0df4 boost_1_85_0_rc2.zip 623a9e5288bae94c0c01b733873ea12613af35f4fc433059a0ddaa5cf0033ce1 boost_1_85_0_rc2.tar.bz2 f7b6b252f488dc8a386bfc79bf7197772c4400f847f0dee50754bb23847d40d2 boost_1_85_0_rc2.7z ec9347228d2c8a7189685b48fe4609a837d3dde45973d4457a8f2396d2c446da boost_1_85_0_rc2.tar.gz The changes from RC1 are: * Boost.ASIO docs generate very long file names that are not usable on Windows. * Boost.Program options does not build in C++23 mode on clang truck (to be clang 19 before boost 1.86.0 is released) Note: It is possible that this is a bug in clang, and it’s in a clang that is not released yet. * Boost.Log has some broken links in its documentation. 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 Release managers

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Is there an interest for an async JSON-RPC library in boost ?
by Quentin Chateau 11 Apr '24

11 Apr '24

A couple of years ago, I wrote packio, a library implementing asynchronous client and server for msgpack-rpc. Over time it evolved into something more generic, an async implementation of the JSON-RPC (https://www.jsonrpc.org/) spec with customizable serialization. It is built on top of asio, and boost.json is supported serializer. This means that with minimal efforts it could evolve into an implementation of JSON-RPC with no dependencies outside of boost - yet extendable. My question then is: is there an interest for it ? I'd probably need to invest a non trivial amount of time into making it boost-compliant and following up on the review process, so I'm wondering whether it is worth it or not. Note that there are two known limitations in my library: - No support for batch mode - No support for sharing a transport between a client and a server (not part of the spec, but requested by some users) I'm looking forward to get the community's opinion. You can check my library on GitHub (https://github.com/qchateau/packio) Feedback on either community's interest for such library, or plain comments on the library are welcome ! Quentin

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Fwd: A proposal for a modern build-system
by Daniele Lupo 11 Apr '24

11 Apr '24

On 23/03/2024 13:16, Hassan Sajjad wrote: > Hi. > > Could you please confirm if my proposal is under consideration? If so, > when can I expect an update regarding its status? > > Sorry for the delay, I had personal issues during those days. I've read the thread, and since now I can't see any serious issue or problem that make me think that the actual build system must be replaced. Maybe updated, but not replaced. For explaining more in detail my point of view (that, I will not ever repeat too many times, it's my personal one, so other people can have other ideas about it): - Boost does not pay people (as far as I know). You're asking for compensation in the first message, but nodoby will pay it, and nodoby asked for it. - I agree with others that three month of development are a bit too optimistic, and also in this case we must maintain two different build systems instead that one. - In the thread I've read many messages like "b2 can do this", "well, also hmake", but no messages like "hmake can do it and b2 it's not able to do it" "oh really? I'd love to have it!". I don't see any important use case that's requested by the community and that hmake will provide while b2 not. So the community wil use hmake to do the same things that at the moment it does with b2. - There's already another build system, even if not much official, and that's cmake. It works well and it's widely used, and that's supported by many package managers, like vcpkg. I have to say that hmake will not be used by them, so it will be limited to the scope of build boost like b2 actually does. Even in this case, it does not add anything. Basically, in the entire thread, in my opinion, there's not a single point that le me think that hmake will make the like easier to boost community. At most we'll have another tool that make the same things. And, repeating myself, I can see that new features actually not supported by b2, pratically modules, are easier to be implemented in b2 instead of using another build system and obligate the entire community to learn another tool for a feature that for now only a few of them will use. In addition to this, I strongly think that instead of a new build system I'll spend some effort, if necessary, in improving existing alternatives, like cmake, that are already widely used by the developer community around the world. Regards Daniele Lupo

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[release] Boost 1.85.0 Release Candidate 1 is available
by Marshall Clow 08 Apr '24

08 Apr '24

The first release candidates for the 1.85.0 release are now available at: <https://boostorg.jfrog.io/artifactory/main/release/1.85.0/source/> The SHA256 checksums are as follows: de84c538aaadf2388362e006d73d0be783541288d87a9ef68e906995efc2148d boost_1_85_0_rc1.tar.gz dd8baccd0b5ca534ad3717a07b426391fe6d49b6b84bf07d10e72792a5d1ba10 boost_1_85_0_rc1.7z 289ab7784b9297e13938876f698ced91f734f9a80f91099d35803b78d15c0210 boost_1_85_0_rc1.tar.bz2 84c35ef72efde30725de7bca8ccf399cd8d205a0d5b249465cf86c818291b7b7 boost_1_85_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. -- The Release managers

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[release] status of the Boost release
by Marshall Clow 08 Apr '24

08 Apr '24

The RC1 has been tested, and three problems have been reported (so far) * Boost.ASIO docs generate very long file names that are not usable on Windows. * Boost.Program options does not build in C++23 mode on clang truck (to be clang 19 before boost 1.86.0 is released) Note: It is possible that this is a bug in clang, and it’s in a clang that is not released yet. * Boost.Log has some broken links in its documentation. And … Some additional libraries no longer build under C++03. (More than 1.84.0) The first one is the one that will impact the most people. Given that we want to fix that, we should fix the other two. I have asked the maintainers to merge the fixes to master. I will be out “watching the sky” tomorrow, but I will turn an RC2 either tomorrow night or Tuesday AM. This means that the release will almost certainly be delayed a couple of days past Wednesday. — Marshall

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