May 2007 - Boost-announce - lists.boost.org

[UUID] Review results
by Hartmut Kaiser 30 May '07

30 May '07

Hi all, now, as Andy has finished his implementation (here: http://boost-consulting.com/vault/, file: uuid_v8.zip) we can move forward with the results of the review. This review has been kind of special in the sense that - it revealed some serious problems with the library to review (a license incompatibility problem and a security related problem around the random number generator scheme used), - it also spawned lots of dicussions on how to solve these problems. In the end we reached full agreement on what has to be done and Andy agreed to implement the changes. Normally, the mentioned problems would have prevented the acceptance of the library into Boost. OTOH, I think the following facts warrant not to reject the library in the first place: - The issues have already been discussed and a consensus has been reached on how to resolve the problems - Almost all reviewers found the proposed library to be incredibly useful and wanted to see the library accepted given the problems will be resolved - Andy fixed all of the significant problems in a short timeframe The final decision about the acceptance of the library will be made after a mini review of the proposed library (to be scheduled), which should concentrate on the new code presented by Andy and whether the mentioned problems have been appropriately fixed. Regards Hartmut Review Manager

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Re: [Boost-announce] Review Schedule - Spring 2007
by Talbot, George 25 May '07

25 May '07

I would like to help out. I haven't been a regular contributor to the mailing list--more of a silent lurker. -- George T. Talbot <gtalbot(a)locuspharma.com> > -----Original Message----- > From: boost-announce-bounces(a)lists.boost.org [mailto:boost-announce- > bounces(a)lists.boost.org] On Behalf Of Tom Brinkman > Sent: Friday, May 25, 2007 12:36 AM > To: boost(a)lists.boost.org; boost-announce(a)lists.boost.org; Ronald Garcia > Subject: [Boost-announce] Review Schedule - Spring 2007 > > We need review manager volunteers for most of the libraries > in the review queue. If your interested, let us know by > replying to this thread. Preferably, you would have a > background in the problem domain, a regular contributer to the > boost mailing list, but no association with the > library. Some of the libraries have been waiting > patiently for a volunteer for some time now. > > The review schedule is available here: > > http://www.boost.org/more/formal_review_schedule.html . > > You can read the "review manager" > requirements at the following link: > > http://www.boost.org/more/formal_review_process.htm > > Most of the libraries are located at the Boost Sandbox Vault, > located here: > > http://boost-consulting.com/vault/ > > Maintainers of the Review Queue: > > Ronald Garcia (garcia (at) cs.indiana.edu ) > Tom Brinkman (reportbase (at) gmail.com) > > If there is any errors or ommisions in this report, > please send them to Ron or Tom. > > > Here is a summary of the libraries that are in the queue. > > ------------------------------------- > Library: Exception > Author: Emil Dotchevski > Location: http://www.revergestudios.com/boost-exception/boost- > exception.zip > Review Manager: Needed > Date: Needed > Summary: > The purpose of Boost Exception is to free designers of > exception classes from having to consider what data needs to > be stored in exception objects in order for the catch site to > be able to make sense of what went wrong. When Boost Exception > is used, arbitrary values can be stored in any exception. This can be > done directly in the throw-expression, or at a later time as the > exception object propagates up the call stack. The ability to add > data to any exception object after it has been thrown is important, > because often some of the information needed to handle an > exception is unavailable at the time of the throw. > > > ----------------------------------------- > Library: Scope Exit > Author: Alexander Nasonov > Location: Boost Sandbox Vault > Review Manager: Needed > Date: Needed > Summary: > The scope-exit-arg-pp-seq is Boot.Preprocessor sequence > of identifiers that can be used inside scope-exit-body. > The direct-declarator is declarator-id followed by optional > argument of type boost::scope_exit_group (inside brackets or > after the equal sign). This construct executes scope-exit-body > at the close of the current scope. > > ----------------------------------------- > Library: Finite State Machines > Author: Andrey Semashev > Location: Boost Sandbox Vault > Review Manager: Martin Vuille > Date: Needed > Summary: > The Boost.FSM library is an implementation of FSM > (stands for Finite State Machine) programming concept. > There are many cases when a developer would like to distinguish the > behavior of a given object depending on some conditions or its > internal state. For example, when making software to control > an underground charging tourniquiet a programmer would like to > separate states in which the tourniquiet may persist: an idle state, > when the device awaits for another passenger that would like to > pass; a processing state, when the passenger have come > and put his ticket into the device; and the passing state, > when the tourniquiet lets the passenger pass through. In > fact, each state describes different reaction of the machine > at the same events (a passenger may only pass after paying > for ticket). Obviously, the tourniquiet have to be able to > change its internal state in order to function properly, > this is called state switching or transitions between > states (or just transitions for short). > > ----------------------------------- > Library: Floating Point Utilities > Author: Johan Råde > Location: Boost Sandbox Vault > http://boost-consulting.com/vault/index.php?directory=Math%20-%20Numerics > Review Manager: Needed > Date: Needed > Summary: > Proposed Additions to the Boost Math Library > > <boost/math/fpclassify.hpp> > Functions for floating point number classification: > fpclassify, isfinite, isinf, isnan, isnormal. Follows TR1. > > <boost/math/signbit.hpp> > Functions for floating point number sign bit access and modification: > signbit, copysign, changesign. Follows TR1. > > <boost/math/nonfinite_num_facets.hpp> > Facets that parse and format infinity and NaN according to the C99 > standard. > Used for portable handling of infinity and NaN in text streams. > > ----------------------------------- > Library: Switch > Author: Steven Watanabe > Location: Boost Sandbox Vault > http://tinyurl.com/yvssgx > Review Manager: Needed > Date: Needed > Introduction: The built in C/C++ switch statement is very efficient. > Unfortunately, unlike a chained if/else construct there is no easy way to > use it when the number of cases depends on a template parameter. > <TODO: more description needed> > _______________________________________________ > Unsubscribe & other changes: > http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost-announce

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Review Schedule - Spring 2007
by Tom Brinkman 25 May '07

25 May '07

We need review manager volunteers for most of the libraries in the review queue. If your interested, let us know by replying to this thread. Preferably, you would have a background in the problem domain, a regular contributer to the boost mailing list, but no association with the library. Some of the libraries have been waiting patiently for a volunteer for some time now. The review schedule is available here: http://www.boost.org/more/formal_review_schedule.html . You can read the "review manager" requirements at the following link: http://www.boost.org/more/formal_review_process.htm Most of the libraries are located at the Boost Sandbox Vault, located here: http://boost-consulting.com/vault/ Maintainers of the Review Queue: Ronald Garcia (garcia (at) cs.indiana.edu ) Tom Brinkman (reportbase (at) gmail.com) If there is any errors or ommisions in this report, please send them to Ron or Tom. Here is a summary of the libraries that are in the queue. ------------------------------------- Library: Exception Author: Emil Dotchevski Location: http://www.revergestudios.com/boost-exception/boost-exception.zip Review Manager: Needed Date: Needed Summary: The purpose of Boost Exception is to free designers of exception classes from having to consider what data needs to be stored in exception objects in order for the catch site to be able to make sense of what went wrong. When Boost Exception is used, arbitrary values can be stored in any exception. This can be done directly in the throw-expression, or at a later time as the exception object propagates up the call stack. The ability to add data to any exception object after it has been thrown is important, because often some of the information needed to handle an exception is unavailable at the time of the throw. ----------------------------------------- Library: Scope Exit Author: Alexander Nasonov Location: Boost Sandbox Vault Review Manager: Needed Date: Needed Summary: The scope-exit-arg-pp-seq is Boot.Preprocessor sequence of identifiers that can be used inside scope-exit-body. The direct-declarator is declarator-id followed by optional argument of type boost::scope_exit_group (inside brackets or after the equal sign). This construct executes scope-exit-body at the close of the current scope. ----------------------------------------- Library: Finite State Machines Author: Andrey Semashev Location: Boost Sandbox Vault Review Manager: Martin Vuille Date: Needed Summary: The Boost.FSM library is an implementation of FSM (stands for Finite State Machine) programming concept. There are many cases when a developer would like to distinguish the behavior of a given object depending on some conditions or its internal state. For example, when making software to control an underground charging tourniquiet a programmer would like to separate states in which the tourniquiet may persist: an idle state, when the device awaits for another passenger that would like to pass; a processing state, when the passenger have come and put his ticket into the device; and the passing state, when the tourniquiet lets the passenger pass through. In fact, each state describes different reaction of the machine at the same events (a passenger may only pass after paying for ticket). Obviously, the tourniquiet have to be able to change its internal state in order to function properly, this is called state switching or transitions between states (or just transitions for short). ----------------------------------- Library: Floating Point Utilities Author: Johan Råde Location: Boost Sandbox Vault http://boost-consulting.com/vault/index.php?directory=Math%20-%20Numerics Review Manager: Needed Date: Needed Summary: Proposed Additions to the Boost Math Library <boost/math/fpclassify.hpp> Functions for floating point number classification: fpclassify, isfinite, isinf, isnan, isnormal. Follows TR1. <boost/math/signbit.hpp> Functions for floating point number sign bit access and modification: signbit, copysign, changesign. Follows TR1. <boost/math/nonfinite_num_facets.hpp> Facets that parse and format infinity and NaN according to the C99 standard. Used for portable handling of infinity and NaN in text streams. ----------------------------------- Library: Switch Author: Steven Watanabe Location: Boost Sandbox Vault http://tinyurl.com/yvssgx Review Manager: Needed Date: Needed Introduction: The built in C/C++ switch statement is very efficient. Unfortunately, unlike a chained if/else construct there is no easy way to use it when the number of cases depends on a template parameter. <TODO: more description needed>

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Boost 1.34.0 Released
by Thomas Witt 13 May '07

13 May '07

Boost 1.34.0, the latest version of peer-reviewed, portable C++ libraries, has been released. This release brings five new libraries and extensive updates to existing libraries. http://www.boost.org New Libraries * Foreach Library: BOOST_FOREACH macro for easily iterating over the elements of a sequence, from Eric Niebler. * Statechart Library: Arbitrarily complex finite state machines can be implemented in easily readable and maintainable C++ code, from Andreas Huber. * TR1 Library: An implementation of the C++ Technical Report on Standard Library Extensions, from John Maddock. This library does not itself implement the TR1 components, rather it's a thin wrapper that will include your standard library's TR1 implementation (if it has one), otherwise it will include the Boost Library equivalents, and import them into namespace std::tr1. Highlights include: Reference Wrappers, Smart Pointers, result_of, Function Object Binders, Polymorphic function wrappers, Type Traits, Random Number Generators and Distributions, Tuples, Fixed Size Array, Hash Function Objects, Regular Expressions and Complex Number Additional Algorithms. * Typeof Library: Typeof operator emulation, from Arkadiy Vertleyb and Peder Holt. * Xpressive Library: Regular expressions that can be written as strings or as expression templates, and that can refer to each other and themselves recursively with the power of context-free grammars, from Eric Niebler. Updated Libraries * Assign Library: o Support for ptr_map<key,T> via the new function ptr_map_insert() o Support for initialization of Pointer Containers when the containers hold pointers to an abstract base class. * Date_time library: o Support for new US/Canada timezone rules and other bug fixes. See Change History for details. * Filesystem Library: Major upgrade in preparation for submission to the C++ Standards Committee for TR2. Changes include: o Internationalization, provided by class templates basic_path, basic_filesystem_error, basic_directory_iterator and basic_directory_entry. o Simplification of the path interface by eliminating special constructors to identify native formats. o Rationalization of predicate function design, including the addition of several new functions. o Clearer specification by reference to POSIX, the ISO/ IEEE Single Unix Standard, with provisions for Windows and other operating systems. o Preservation of existing user code whenever possible. o More efficient directory iteration. o Addition of a recursive directory iterator. * Function Library: Boost.Function now implements a small buffer optimization, which can drastically improve the performance when copying or constructing Boost.Function objects storing small function objects. For instance, bind(&X:foo, &x, _1, _2) requires no heap allocation when placed into a Boost.Function object. * Functional/Hash Library o Use declarations for standard classes, so that the library doesn't need to include all of their headers o Deprecated the <boost/functional/hash/*.hpp> headers. o Add support for the BOOST_HASH_NO_EXTENSIONS macro, which disables the extensions to TR1 o Minor improvements to the hash functions for floating point numbers. * Graph Library: o edmonds_maximum_cardinality_matching, from Aaron Windsor. o lengauer_tarjan_dominator_tree, from JongSoo Park. o compressed_sparse_row_graph, from Jeremiah Willcock and Douglas Gregor of Indiana University. o sorted_erdos_renyi_iterator, from Jeremiah Willcock of Indiana University. o biconnected_components now supports a visitor and named parameters, from Janusz Piwowarski. o adjacency_matrix now models the Bidirectional Graph concept. o dijkstra_shortest_paths now calls vis.initialize_vertex for each vertex during initialization. o Note: the name of the compiled library for the GraphViz reader has changed to boost_graph (from bgl-viz) to match Boost conventions. o See the complete revision history for more information. * MultiArray Library: Boost.MultiArray now by default provides range-checking for operator[]. Range checking can be disabled by defining the macro BOOST_DISABLE_ASSERTS before including multi_array.hpp. A bug in multi_array::resize() related to storage orders was fixed. * Multi-index Containers Library: o New random access indices. o Non key-based indices feature new rearrange facilities. o This version also includes a number of optimizations and usage improvements. For a complete list of changes, see the library release notes. * Optional Library: o boost::none_t and boost::none now added to Optional's documentation o Relational operators now directly support arguments of type 'T' and 'none_t' o operator->() now also works with reference types. o Helper functions make_optional(val), make_optional (cond,val) and get_optional_value_or(opt,alternative_value) added. o Constructor taking a boolean condition (as well as a value) added. o Member function get_value_or(alternative_value) added. o Incompatbility bug with mpl::apply<> fixed. o Converting assignment bug with uninitialized lvalues fixed. * Parameter Library: o Every ArgumentPack is now a valid MPL Forward Sequence. o Support for unnamed arguments (those whose keyword is deduced from their types) is added. o Support for named and unnamed template arguments is added. o New overload generation macros solve the forwarding problem directly. o See also the Python library changes, below. * Pointer Container Library: o Support for serialization via Boost.Serialization. o Exceptions can be disabled by defining the macro BOOST_PTR_CONTAINER_NO_EXCEPTIONS before including any header. This macro is defined by default if BOOST_NO_EXCEPTIONS is defined. o Additional std::auto_ptr<T> overloads added s.t. one can also pass std::auto_ptr<T> instead of only T* arguments to member functions. o transfer() now has weaker requirements s.t. one can transfer objects from ptr_container<Derived> to ptr_container<Base>, * Python Library: o Boost.Python now automatically appends C++ signatures to docstrings. The new docstring_options.hpp header is available to control the content of docstrings. o stl_input_iterator, for turning a Python iterable object into an STL input iterator, from Eric Niebler. o Support for void* conversions is added. o Integrated support for wrapping C++ functions built with the parameter library; keyword names are automatically known to docsstrings. o Enhancements to the API for better embedding support (boost::python::import(), boost::python::exec() and boost::python::exec_file()). * Signals Library: More improvements to signal invocation performance from Robert Zeh. * Smart Pointers Library: o Allocator support as proposed in N1851 (162 Kb PDF). o pointer_cast and pointer_to_other utilities to allow pointer-independent code, from Ion Gaztanaga. * String Algorithm Library: o lexicographical_compare o join o New comparison predicates is_less, is_not_greater. o Negative indexes support (like Perl) in various algorihtms (*_head/tail, *_nth). * Wave Library: o Wave now correctly recognizes pp-number tokens as mandated by the C++ Standard, which are converted to C++ tokens right before they are returned from the library. o Several new preprocessing hooks have been added. For a complete description please refer to the related documentation page: The Context Policy. o Shared library (dll) support has been added for the generated Wave libraries. o The overall error handling has been improved. It is now possible to recover and continue after an error or a warning was issued. o Support for optional comment and/or full whitespace preservation in the generated output stream has been added. o The Wave library now performs automatic include guard detection to avoid accessing header files more than once, if appropriate. o Full interactive mode has been added to the Wave tool. Now the Wave tool can be used just like Python or Perl for instance to interactively try out your BOOST_PP macros. Additionally it is now possible to load and save the current state of an interactive session (macro tables et.al.). o The overall performance has been improved by upto 40-60%, depending on the concrete files to process. o Support for new pragmas has been added allowing to control certain library features from inside the preprocessed sources (partial output redirection, control of generated whitespace and #line directives). o Optional support for #pragma message "..." has been added. o This version also includes a number of bug fixes and usage improvements. For a complete list of changes, see the libraries change log. Supported Compilers Boost is tested on a wide range of compilers and platforms. Since Boost libraries rely on modern C++ features not available in all compilers, not all Boost libraries will work with every compiler. The following compilers and platforms have been extensively tested with Boost, although many other compilers and platforms will work as well. For more information, see the regression test results. * Apple GCC 4.0.1 on Mac OS X. * Borland C++ 5.8.2 on Windows. * GNU C++ o 3.2.x., 3.3.x, 3.4.x, 4.0.x, 4.1.x on Linux o 4.1.x on Solaris o 3.4.x on Windows * HP aC++ A.06.14. * Intel C++ 9.1 on Windows, 9.0 on Linux. * Metrowerks CodeWarrior 9.4 on Windows. * Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 (sp5, with and without STLport), 7.0, 7.1, 8.0. Note: Boost does not support the non-standard "Safe" C++ Library shipping with Visual C++ 8.0, which may result in many spurious warnings from Boost headers and other standards-conforming C++ code. To suppress these warnings, define the macro _SCL_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE. * Sun Studio 11 on Solaris. Acknowledgements Thomas Witt managed this release. A great number of people contributed their time and expertise to make this release possible. Special thanks go to Vladimir Prus for making Boost.Build version 2 a reality, David Abrahams for authoring a new Getting Started guide, Rene Rivera for general build and installation support and Greg D. for answering countless questions. -- Thomas Witt witt(a)acm.org

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2007 Boost Conference is Next Week!
by David Abrahams 08 May '07

08 May '07

The following message is a courtesy copy of an article that has been posted to gmane.comp.lib.boost.user,gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel,gmane.comp.lib.boost.interest as well. Hi Everyone, As you probably know, Boost holds its first annual conference next week (http://boostcon.com) Since we first announced the conference, there have been a couple of recent additions to the already stellar program (http://www.boostcon.com/program) most notably a ConceptGCC InstallFest, so every attendee can have a toolchain with some of the most important C++0x features already implemented (http://www.boostcon.com/program/sessions#gregor-conceptgcc-installfest) There are still a few places left; if you have been thinking of coming, now is the time to take action! Onsite registrations will be accepted Sunday May 13 from 4-6pm in the big entry lounge of Aspen Meadows. If you're planning to register onsite, you should still book a hotel room ASAP (http://www.boostcon.com/location/lodging#reservations) Please send any questions to boostcon-plan-AT-lists.boost-consulting.com See you in Aspen! -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting http://www.boost-consulting.com Don't Miss BoostCon 2007! ==> http://www.boostcon.com

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[boost][math toolkit] Review results
by Matthias Schabel 02 May '07

02 May '07

I'd like to congratulate John Maddock, Paul Bristow, and their contributors on putting together an outstanding submission to Boost. It is rare to have complete unanimity among votes, but in this case there were no dissenters to accepting either the special functions or the statistical distributions portions of the library, so I'm glad to announce that it has been accepted for inclusion in Boost. Thanks to the many participants in the review : Gottlob Frege, Guillaume Melquiond, Johan Råde, Arnaldur Gylfason, John Phillips, Mark Van De Vyver, Stephan Tolksdorf, Hubert Holin, Seweryn Habdank-Wojewodski, Kevin Lynch, Leonaldo Peralta, Jeff Garland, and Stefan Seefeld (apologies for anyone I might have missed in this list). Here is a brief summary of the relatively few major issues that were raised during the course of the review : 1) Error handling is an issue that arises because this library is at the frontier between traditional numerical libraries and a (hopefully) new breed of such libraries that utilize modern programming techniques and facilities. Jeff Garland suggested that the default behavior should be to throw an exception, with errno being an option enabled by macro. It would also be nice to have more granular control over which instances throw exceptions and which do not (so, for example, a user could choose to ignore denormals). It was also suggested that additional, more transparent exceptions be provided for cases such as failure to converge rather than reusing tools::logic_error. 2) Jeff Garland also pointed out, rightly in my opinion, that attempts to use statistical functions that do not exist for a distribution should fail to compile rather than leading to a runtime error (e.g. mean of a Cauchy distribution). A reasonable method of implementing this should be devised or a strong argument for why it is not feasible/desirable provided. 3) Arnaldur Gylfason did some nice accuracy and performance testing vs. R. It was noted that the performance of quantile functions in this library was significantly worse than R, unlike non-quantile functions. He also pointed out that, for discrete distributions, the current behavior of returning fractional results for quantiles may not be the expected one. These issues should be addressed and documented. 4) Hubert Holin suggested the possibility of use of a policy parameter to choose between speed and accuracy. Another interesting possibility would be to allow the user to specify the desired precision either at compile or runtime. 5) It appears that this library will actually become two "sublibraries" within the Boost.Math library. Currently all code lives in the boost::math namespace; I would like to at least see a discussion of the possibility of having boost::math::special_functions, boost::math::statistics, and, perhaps, boost::math::statistics::distributions namespaces - as more functionality gets added to boost::math, collisions will become more likely, so some thought given now to logical partitioning may save pain later. During the review a number of typos and minor issues of documentation were raised, which the authors will need to address if they haven't already. In particular, John Phillips noted that the rationale behind using rational (vs. polynomial) approximations be clarified, the derivation of coefficients be documented, and the list of special functions in the documentation be expanded to encompass all functions actually implemented in the library. Stephan Tolksdorf requested a table listing standard statistical tests and the corresponding library implementations and enumerated a number of other documentation issues. Overall, the library was very well received, and the authors are to be commended on the tremendous amount of care and effort devoted to its preparation. Matthias Schabel Review Manager

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