[boost] [iostreams] Entire iostreams library outdated in 1.34.0?

From: Kim Barrett (kab_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-05-14 18:20:57

Following up on a discussion started on the boost-users list, under
the same subject.

It seems that a significant number of changes were made to the
boost.iostreams library on the RC_1_33_0 branch, but never merged into
the trunk.

There are also a few changes on the RC_1_34_0 branch that
have not been merged to into the trunk.

There has also been some work on the trunk, some of which is on one of
those branches, a few cases of merges between one of those branches
and the trunk, and I found at least one case of apparent merging with
code rearrangement or other changes (at least, diff seemed to not
match up the (similar by eye) changes).

So basically there is a bit of a mess in the iostreams library. I'm
volunteering to help clean it up. I'm planning to put together a patch
to the trunk, and another patch to the RC_1_34_0 branch, such that

* changes that are presently only on the RC_1_33_0 or RC_1_34_0 branch
are merged to trunk

* changes that are presently only on the RC_1_33_0 branch are merged
to the RC_1_34_0 branch.

A preliminary skim of differences doesn't look too bad; hopefully I
won't find anything too icky.

Some issues / questions:

* I can test these changes against a couple of versions of gcc. I
can't test against anything else. So I'll need help with that.

* Somebody else should probably review the patches.

* I don't have commit privilages, so someone else will need to take
care of that step.

* Thomas would of course need to approve any changes to the RC_1_34_0
branch. The library including the changes on the RC_1_33_0 branch
tested as part of the 1.33.x series of releases, but testing with
those changes stopped once testing resources were redirected away from
that series. So there is some risk that some of these changes might
prove incompatible with other parts of the 1.34.0 release. From a
quick skim, that doesn't look to likely, but it is a risk.

* Obviously 1.34.0 has gone out. So any changes on the RC_1_34_0
branch would only be picked up by a 1.34.1 release.