January 2006 - Boost-announce

[Review] Formal review of Fixed Strings library starts today
by Hartmut Kaiser 19 Jan '06

19 Jan '06

Hi all, The review of the proposed Boost Fixed Strings library written by Reece Dunn starts today (January 19th, 2006) and ends January 28th, 2006. You can download the library here: http://tinyurl.com/czrh9 --------------------------------------------------- About the library: The fixed_strings library is a buffer-overrun safe version of using fixed-size character array data buffers. It provides integration with the C API allowing strcpy, et. al. to be used safely for a fixed string and provides a basic_string interface allowing easy migration to C++ strings. There is also a formatter function object allowing (w)sprintf to be used in a single line! Example: boost::fixed_string< 5 > hi; strcpy( hi, "Hello World" ); hi.push_back( '!' ); std::cout << hi << std::endl; std::cout << boost::formatter( "Meine %s Welt!", "kleine" ) << std::endl; output: Hello Meine kleine Welt! --------------------------------------------------- Please always state in your review, whether you think the library should be accepted as a Boost library! Additionally please consider giving feedback on the following general topics: - What is your evaluation of the design? - What is your evaluation of the implementation? - What is your evaluation of the documentation? - What is your evaluation of the potential usefulness of the library? - Did you try to use the library? With what compiler? Did you have any problems? - How much effort did you put into your evaluation? A glance? A quick reading? In-depth study? - Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain? Regards Hartmut Review Manager

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Boost Review Wizard's Report: January 2006
by Ronald Garcia 19 Jan '06

19 Jan '06

Review Wizard Status Report for January 2006 Tom Brinkman Ronald Garcia 1) News 2) Review Managers Needed 3) Review Queue 4) Libraries Under Development //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 1) News //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Happy New Year! Here are some statistics regarding Boost Library reviews in 2005: - 12 Libraries were reviewed - 8 Libraries were accepted - 1 Library (Function Types) was accepted pending a mini-review - 2 Libraries were rejected - 1 Library has yet to receive a final verdict (ASIO) Policy Pointer has been removed from the review queue because the author has stated that it is not quite ready. We need review managers. Please take a look at the list of libraries in need of managers and check out their descriptions. If you can serve as review manager for any of them, send one of us an email. Note: If you have any suggestions about how we could improve the Review Wizard's status report, please email "reportbase at gmail dot com" and "garcia at cs dot indiana dot edu". //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 2) Review Managers Needed //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// There are a few libraries in the review queue in need of review managers. If you would like to volunteer to be a review manager, please contact Ron or Tom. The following libraries still require review managers: Fusion Shmem Pimpl Pointer Type Traits (modification) Function Types //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 3) Review Queue //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Fixed Strings - January 19 2006 - January 28 2006 Intrusive Containers Function Types (mini-re-review) Shmem Fusion Pimpl Pointer Type Traits (modification) Fixed Strings Author - Reece Dunn Review Manager - Harmut Kaiser Download: Boost Sandbox (http://boost-sandbox.sourceforge.net/) under fixed_string Description: The fixed string library provides buffer overrun protection for static sized strings (char s[ n ]). It provides a C-style string interface for compatibility with C code (for example, porting a C program to C++). There is also a std::string-style interface using a class based on flex_string by Andre Alexandrescu with a few limitations due to the non-resizable nature of the class. Intrusive Containers Author - Olaf Krzikalla Review Manager - to be determined Download: http://people.freenet.de/turtle++/intrusive.zip Description: While intrusive containers were and are widely used in C, they became more and more forgotten in the C++-world due to the presence of the standard containers, which don't support intrusive techniques. Boost.Intrusive not only reintroduces this technique to C++, but also encapsulates the implementation in STL-like interfaces. Hence anyone familiar with standard containers can use intrusive containers with ease. Function Types (mini-re-review) Author - Tobias Schwinger Review Manager - to be determined Download: http://boost-sandbox.sourceforge.net/vault/ Description: This library provides a metaprogramming facility to classify, decompose and synthesize function-, function pointer-, function reference- and member function pointer types. For the purpose of this documentation, these types are collectively referred to as function types (this differs from the standard definition and redefines the term from a programmer's perspective to refer to the most common types that involve functions). The classes introduced by this library shall conform to the concepts of the Boost Metaprogramming library (MPL). The Function Types library enables the user to: * test an arbitrary type for being a function type of specified kind, * inspect properties of function types, * view and modify sub types of an encapsulated function type with MPL Sequence operations, and * synthesize function types. This library supports variadic functions and can be configured to support non-default calling conventions. Shmem Author - Ion Gaztanaga Review Manager - to be determined Download: Boost Sandbox Vault -> Memory (http://boost-sandbox.sourceforge.net/vault/index.php? direction=0&order=&directory=Memory) http://ice.prohosting.com/newfunk/boost/libs/shmem/doc/html/index.html Description: Shmem offers tools to simplify shared memory usage in applications. These include shared memory creation/destruction and synchronization objects. It also implements dynamic allocation of portions of a shared memory segment and an easy way to construct C++ objects in shared memory. Apart from this, Shmem implements a wide range of STL-like containers and allocators that can be safely placed in shared memory, helpful to implement complex shared memory data-bases and other efficient inter-process communications. Fusion Author - Joel de Guzman Review Manager - to be determined Download: http://spirit.sourceforge.net/dl_more/fusion_v2/ Description: Fusion is a library of heterogenous containers and views and algorithms. A set of heterogenous containers (vector, list, set and map) is provided out of the box along with view classes that present various composable views over the data. The containers and views follow a common sequence concept with an underlying iterator concept that binds it all together, suitably making the algorithms fully generic over all sequence types. The architecture is somewhat modeled after MPL which in turn is modeled after STL. It is code-named "fusion" because the library is the "fusion" of compile time metaprogramming with runtime programming. Pimpl Pointer Author - Asger Mangaard Review Manager - to be determined Download: Boost Sandbox (http://boost-consulting.com/vault/) under pimpl_ptr. Description: The pimpl idiom is widely used to reduce compile times and disable code coupling. It does so by moving private parts of a class from the .hpp file to the .cpp file. However, it's implementation can be tricky, and with many pitfalls (especially regarding memory management). The pimpl_ptr library is a single header file, implementing a special policy based smart pointer to greately ease the implementation of the pimpl idiom. Type_Traits (modification) Author - Alexander Nasonov Review Manager - To be determined Download : You can download it from http://cpp-experiment.sourceforge.net/promote-20050917.tar.gz or browse it online http://cpp-experiment.sourceforge.net/promote-20050917/ Description: Proposal to add promote, integral_promotion and floating_point_promotion class templates to type_traits library. Alexander tried it on different compilers with various success: GNU/Linux (gentoo-hardened): gcc 3.3 and 3.4, Intel 7, 8 and 9 Windows: VC7 free compiler Sparc Solaris: Sun C++ 5.3 and 5.7 See comments at the beginning of promote_enum_test.cpp for what is broken. http://cpp-experiment.sourceforge.net/promote-20050917/libs/ type_traits/test/promote_enum_test.cpp Alexander requests a fast-track review. //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 4) Libraries under development //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Property Tree Author - Marcin Kalicinski Download: Boost Sandbox Vault (http://boost-consulting.com/vault/) property_tree_rev3.zip Please let us know of any libraries you are currently developing that you intend to submit for review. Tom Brinkman Ronald Garcia Boost Review Wizards

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binary int utility: review result
by Pavel Vozenilek 11 Jan '06

11 Jan '06

Two small utilities implementing easier typing of binary numbers were reviewed from 2005/10/13. (http://lists.boost.org/boost-announce/2005/10/0072.php) One, template based, was written by Scott Schurr, second, preprocessor based, was written by Matt Calabrese. The reviewers preferred the preprocessor version more than the template based one (and thought such utility is worth to be included in Boost). So the Matt's version is accepted among Boost.Utilities. Short documentation and test cases need to be provided. Suggestions during review may be considered (e.g. shorter name). Thanks Scott and Matt for their work and apology for inexcusable delay in announcing the result. /Pavel

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