Re: [boost] [network] cpp-netlib 0.7 ready to be released

Subject: Re: [boost] [network] cpp-netlib 0.7 ready to be released
From: David Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-10-15 10:32:45

At Thu, 14 Oct 2010 23:15:57 +0800,
Dean Michael Berris wrote:
> 
> Hi Guys,
> 
> I just wanted to give everyone interested a heads up on the progress
> being made on the cpp-netlib project (which I'm working on full-time
> at the moment). 

Awesome!  Is someone funding that?

> Basically:
> 
>  * There's now an asynchronous/active HTTP client implementation that
> returns response objects that encapsulate futures. This uses the
> Boost.Asio asynchronous socket interfaces to implement reads/writes on
> the active object.
>  * The documentation has been moved from Quickbook to ReStructuredText
> and generated with Sphinx (and they look really nice if I may say so
> myself: http://mikhailberis.github.com/cpp-netlib/).

They do!  Having not had very much experience with Quickbook, I would
be very curious as to what prompted the switch.  

I also think you should know that there's a
slightly-crude-but-very-effective literate programming system for ReST
in Boost, under boost/tools/litre/.  You can see it in use for the
Boost.Parameter library.  We also used that to check all the code in
the C++TMP book.

> This impending 0.7 release also uses more template metaprogramming
> tools from Boost.MPL to implement the tag dispatch mechanism to modify
> behaviors of the classes based on these tags. 

Does that show up in the library's interface?

> Policies were introduced and are chosen depending on the
> characteristics of the tags provided.
> 
> Development on 0.8 shall include:
> 
>   * A more feature-complete HTTP server template that supports a
> worker thread pool where handlers get invoked, and where handlers can
> write data to the connection asynchronously.
>   * A streaming HTTP client interface to support passing a raw stream
> associated with a socket to a handler function or as part of the
> response object returned.
>   * A preliminary XMPP client implementation.
>   * The beginnings of a web service framework on top of the HTTP
> server to allow for a more web-framework like feel, similar to how web
> frameworks like Tornado Web (http://tornadoweb.org/)
> 
> Target release of 0.8 will be the first week of November.
> 
> The development of cpp-netlib targets an end-of-year submission to the
> Boost Library, and hopefully those interested in the project can go
> ahead and try it out now so that I and the other developers can work
> on feature requests before that time -- and so that early evaluations
> can guide the direction of the development before December.
> 
> Thanks everyone and I look forward to hearing from you!
> 
> Note: You can find the documentation for cpp-netlib (which I presented
> at BoostCon 2010) at http://mikhailberis.github.com/cpp-netlib

Having something like this in Boost is long overdue, so I'm really
looking forward to the results!

-- 
Dave Abrahams
BoostPro Computing
http://www.boostpro.com