April 2011 - Boost-announce

[boost] [xint] Formal Review Result
by Vladimir Prus 30 Apr '11

30 Apr '11

I apologize for the delay in producing the final summary and result of the Boost.Xint review, but here it is. Votes ===== YES: - Christian Henning - Steven Watanabe - Jarrad Waterloo - Edward Diener - Paul A. Bristow NO : - Mathias Gaunard - Joel Falcou - Anders Dalvander - Joachim Faulhaber - Phil Endecott - Domagoj Saric - Gordon Woodhull ("fraction of a vote") I might have missed somebody inside the 454 messages I have as result of the review, but the overall picture is clear -- the votes are split. High-level issues ================= - The claim that the library is "fast" is not necessary true. Phil has did some checking against hand-written assembler that don't look too good. - It is not clear whether the design allows for improving performance of fixed-size integers using specialization (again, see Phil's comments) - There were concerns about COW. In particular, it was very clearly stated that if COW is used, it should work fine in multi-threaded programs. - It was suggested to use ET. - Some folks suggested better separation between algorithms and data representation. Specific issues =============== - It was pointed out that "a + b + c" creates a pile of temporaries, and this can be improved without using ET. - Joachim's review raised a lot of valid points. Section 3 of his reviews in something that should be addressed, more or less entirely. Note that while we normally don't force specific coding style, some of formatting pointed out is simply unacceptable if this code is to be read by anybody. - 'Secure' flag is probably not so much of it. Future directions ================= I think that reviews by Phil and Joachim are most important in specying evolutionary directions for Boost.XInt. Chad made several comments about what he plans to do, in particular: - http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel/216935 Conclusion ========== I think there's no doubt that (i) this domain is important and (ii) Chad has put a lot of work into this library, producing several iterations. It was pointed out that we have many arbitrary-precision libraries skeletons all around Boost, and providing such a solid offering for review is a significant accomplishment. And it everybody learned a lot during the review. There was a couple of important meta-points raised during review -- whether review should focus on external interface only, and what is the scope of the library. Some reviewers argued that only external interface matters. However, it seems to me (as review manager), that concerns about internal design are valid, and may not be rejected offhand. After all, external interface of an integer library is more or less defined by mathematics, and internal design plays a key role in successfull evolution of the library. There was also heated discussion about the scope of the library, in particular support for fixed-width integers. I think that it's abstractly OK for this library to treat fixed-width integers as second-class citizens. However, I am having hard time determining the intended scope of the library. If I'm doing cryptography, would I really want to implement cryptography algorithms from the books with Boost.XInt, only to introduce bugs that are probably fixed in existing implementations (often, included in the OS). And if I'm really intent on doing that, I probably want raw performance, including a way to plug in optimized backends using SSE 2011, CUDA, and whatever fancy technology is there. If I'm doing general programming, then I'm most likely interested in not too big integers. They might be fixed-width 128-bit integers, or they might be something larger-than-64, but not necessary fixed. However, such integers are not the scope of the library, and they were found to have suboptimal performance. It is certainly possible to refine/define the scope, optimize everything for that scope, accomodate the proposals made during review, and obtain an excellent Boost library. However, there are some many suggestions, and so many planned redesigns and changes, that we need a second look at the library. Further, because of the global nature of the changes, it would be very hard to identify a specific subset that must be improved and then go through mini-review. For that reason, I've arrived at the the following result: Boost.Xint library is not accepted at this time. We'll be happy to have another full review of the library when the next version is ready. Thanks to Chad for the submission and for everybody who participated in the review! - Volodya -- Vladimir Prus Mentor Graphics +7 (812) 677-68-40 _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost

1 0

[Review] Boost.Convert library, new subversion URL
by Edward Diener 24 Apr '11

24 Apr '11

This is a reminder that formal review of the Boost.Convert library by Vladimir Batov runs from April 23 through May 2. *************** * Its Purpose * *************** The library builds on the past boost::lexical_cast experience, then takes those conversion-related ideas further to suit better today's applications and programing needs. It still offers simple, minimal interface, familiar conversion behavior and additionally provides: * throwing and non-throwing conversion-failure behavior; * support for the default/fallback value to be returned when conversion fails; * two types of the conversion-failure check - basic/simple and better/safe; * formatting support based on the standard std::streams and std::stream-based manipulators (like std::hex, std::scientific, etc.); * support for different locales; * support for boost::range-compliant char and wchar_t-based containers; * no DefaultConstructibility requirement for the Target/Destination type; * consistent framework to uniformly incorporate any type-to-type conversions, extensibility and additional room to grow. With its present support for string-to-type and type-to-string conversions it is an essential tool for applications making extensive use of configuration or MS-Windows-Registry-style files or having to process/prepare considerable amounts of data in, say, XML, etc. More so, it is easily extendable to accommodate, specialize and uniformly deploy new user-defined type-to-type conversions. ******************* * Where to get it * ******************* Normally you can find Boost.Convert here: http://www.boostpro.com/vault/index.php?action=downloadfile&filename=boost-… However because the boostpro web site is having problems and will likely be down for the weekend, I have put the library into the Boost sandbox temporarily, since the Boost sandbox is up. So you can get the library, using Subversion, from https://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/sandbox/convert. This is exactly the same as the vault with the files unzipped. he HTML documentation is part of the distribution and can be found at libs/convert/index.html in the distribution above. The direct link to the documentation in the subversion repository is: https://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/sandbox/convert/libs/convert/index.html . ******************** * Writing a review * ******************** The reviews and all comments should be submitted to the developers list, and the email should have "[convert] Review" at the beginning of the subject line to make sure it's not missed. Please explicitly state in your review whether the library should be accepted. The general review checklist: - 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? And finally, every review should answer this question: - Do you think the library should be accepted as a Boost library? Be sure to say this explicitly so that your other comments don't obscure your overall opinion. Edward Diener, Review Manager

1 0

[locale] Review results for Boost.Locale library
by Chad Nelson 23 Apr '11

23 Apr '11

The formal review of Artyom Beilis' Boost.Locale library, originally scheduled to run from April 7th through the 16th and extended through the 22nd, is now finished. Fifteen people cast votes on it, ten for acceptance and five against. Though not overwhelming, the two-to-one majority clearly indicates the consensus of the list. As such: The Boost.Locale library IS ACCEPTED into Boost. The details follow, starting with the voters in favor, in the order their reviews were received: * John Bytheway * Steven Watanabe * Sebastian Redl * Fabio Fracassi ("possibly conditional") * Noah Roberts * Steve Bush * Volker Lukas * Paul A. Bristow * Matus Chochlik * Gevorg Voskanyan Those opposed: * Ryou Ezoe * Phil Endecott (but "borderline") * Edward Diener * Mathias Gaunard * Vincente BOTET ("count my vote as 1/2 or 1/4 vote") There was also an early off-list review from Darren Cook which did not include a vote, only listing issues. There was a great deal of discussion around the library, and a number of issues detailed. The major ones (and some less major ones that were repeated by several reviewers) are summarized below, along with the initials of the reviewer(s) who brought them up and Artyom's responses. Note that although I followed the discussions closely, these are only the issues brought up in the formal reviews themselves. * Issue: date_time interface uses enums for periods, which is error prone and inconsistent with other date/time libraries. (JB) * Response: Will be addressed. * Issue: Reference documentation needs more detail or some things not clear; some terms used in the documentation are not defined or are defined too briefly; can't find headers that items are defined in from the documentation. (JB, SW, FF, PE, ED, MC) * Response: Will be addressed. * Issue: There are no prev/next links in the documentation, or tutorial can't easily be navigated. (DC, JB, SR, FF, MC) * Response: Looking into it. * Issue: Few examples include output. (JB) * Response: Will be addressed. * Issue: No examples in Asian languages; the library may have design flaws that are not apparent without them. (DC) * Response: [Artyom has indicated to me (privately) that he's adding such examples. -- CN] * Issue: The translation system requires narrow-character tags, making it English-centric. (RE, ED) * Response: The library implements the most popular and most widely used message-catalog format. It is not perfect, but it is the best system currently available. There may be a work-around if you really must use wide-character languages under Windows. * Issue: Support for wchar_t/UTF-16 is unclear. (RE, ED) * Response: Wide characters are fully supported. * Issue: Doesn't support Win32 API as a backend. (RE) * Response: Misunderstanding, Win32 API backend is fully supported. * Issue: boost::locale::format is not compatible with boost::format. (FF, NR) * Response: boost::format is too limited for use in localization, and throws on any error, which means that a translator error could crash the program. * Issue: boost::locale::date_time is not compatible with boost::date_time. (FF) * Response: An unavoidable consequence of the differences between them, which are necessary due to support for locale independence and non-Gregorian calendars. * Issue: Boundary analysis is only available when using ICU. (FF) * Response: At present, only the ICU backend supports proper boundary analysis. * Issue: Little documentation on the toolchain needed to extract strings and translate them, or the versions required. (FF, NR) * Response: Will be addressed. * Issue: Concerns about relying on GPL/LGPL-licensed tools, or their availability on all platforms, or recommendations to write a Boost version of these tools. (NR) * Response: Reimplementing these is non-trivial and unnecessary; the licensing for these tools does not affect the programs developed with them. All are available for all platforms; will add explicit instructions for getting the latest versions for Windows. * Issue: Use of strings instead of symbols for language and encoding makes run-time errors that could be compile-time errors. The most common ones should be symbols. (PE) * Response: There are dozens of character encodings, and even more locales, and no way to determine which ones are the most common. Not all encodings are supported by all backends or OS configurations. Names ignore case and non-alphanumeric characters, which should minimize errors that could be generated from them. utf_to_utf transcoding will be added. * Issue: Error handling (in conversions) is very basic. (PE) * Response: An unavoidable limitation of the backends. * Issue: Code could use more commenting. (PE, VL) * Response: Noted, will be addressed in the future. * Issue: Some documentation phrasing is confusing, or could use a native English speaker's input. (SR, VL) * Response: Will be addressed as discovered. * Issue: There are no lists of valid language, country, encoding, or variant strings. (ED) * Response: Listed in standards ISO-639 and ISO-3166, which are referenced in the library's documentation. These standards are updated occasionally, and should be referred to directly for the latest information. * Issue: Only works on contiguous, entirely-in-memory strings. (MG) * Response: All current backends require this, and it satisfies the vast majority of use-cases. * Issue: Boundary analysis goes through the entire string and returns a vector of positions. (MG) * Response: Not perfect, but given the limitations of the existing backends, it is reasonable. * Issue: The library's interface is not generic enough, or independent enough of the libraries that it wraps. (VB) * Response: The interface is similar to that of every other i18n library, and should make as few assumptions as possible. It should not be changed. * Issue: The date-time code should be merged into Boost.DateTime. (VB) * Response: Date-time code is locale-dependent by its nature, and is more natural in Boost.Locale. Updating Boost.DateTime to do everything that Boost.Locale's library does would require a lot of work, and in all the time it has existed, only the Gregorian calendar has been implemented. There are Boost libraries that overlap others, so this is not a novelty. -- Chad Nelson Oak Circle Software, Inc. * * *

1 0

[locale] Formal review of Boost.Locale library -- final days
by Chad Nelson 21 Apr '11

21 Apr '11

The final day of the Boost.Locale formal review is tomorrow, April 22nd. If you're planning to submit a review but haven't, now is the time. I'll accept reviews up until I complete the report on Saturday morning. Writing a review ================ If you feel this is an interesting library, then please submit your review to the developer list (preferably), or to the review manager (me). Here are some questions you might want to answer in your review: - 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? And finally, every review should answer this question: - Do you think the library should be accepted as a Boost library? Be sure to say this explicitly so that your other comments don't obscure your overall opinion. -- Chad Nelson Oak Circle Software, Inc. * * *

1 0

[Review] Formal review of Boost.Convert library starts Saturday
by Edward Diener 21 Apr '11

21 Apr '11

This is a reminder that formal review of the Boost.Convert library by Vladimir Batov starts on Saturday, April 23, and is scheduled to last through May 2. *************** * Its Purpose * *************** From the introduction: Boost.Convert builds on the boost::lexical_cast experience and still offers a simple, minimal interface, familiar conversion behavior and more: * throwing and non-throwing behavior when conversion fails; * support for the default/fallback value to be returned when conversion fails; * two types of the conversion-failure check - basic/simple and better/safe; * formatting support based on the standard std::streams and std::stream-based manipulators (like std::hex, std::scientific, etc.); * support for different locales; * support for boost::range-compliant char and wchar_t-based string containers (std::string, std::wstring, char const*, wchar_t const*, char array[], etc.); * no DefaultConstructibility requirement for the Target/Destination type; * extendibility and additional room to grow. ******************* * Where to get it * ******************* You can find the Boost.Convert here: http://www.boostpro.com/vault/index.php?action=downloadfile&filename=boost-… The HTML documentation is part of the distribution and can be found at libs/convert/index.html in the distribution above. ******************** * Writing a review * ******************** The reviews and all comments should be submitted to the developers list, and the email should have "[convert] Review" at the beginning of the subject line to make sure it's not missed. Please explicitly state in your review whether the library should be accepted. The general review checklist: - 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? And finally, every review should answer this question: - Do you think the library should be accepted as a Boost library? Be sure to say this explicitly so that your other comments don't obscure your overall opinion. Edward Diener, Review Manager

1 0

[locale] Formal review of Boost.Locale library EXTENDED
by Chad Nelson 15 Apr '11

15 Apr '11

There have been only a handful of reviews of the proposed Boost.Locale library to date, and several people have requested more time to provide theirs, so the formal review of the Boost.Locale library has been extended. The deadline for reviews is now 11:59pm UTC on Friday, April 22nd. For those in the Western hemisphere, remember that that's earlier than it might seem -- 7:59pm in New York, 4:59 in Los Angeles. I'll accept late reviews until I complete the report on Saturday morning, but please try to get yours in earlier. You can find the "boost_locale_for_review" version here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/cppcms/files/boost_locale/ The HTML documentation can also be seen at: http://cppcms.sourceforge.net/boost_locale/html/index.html Writing a review ================ If you feel this is an interesting library, then please submit your review to the developer list (preferably), or to the review manager (me). Here are some questions you might want to answer in your review: - 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? And finally, every review should answer this question: - Do you think the library should be accepted as a Boost library? Be sure to say this explicitly so that your other comments don't obscure your overall opinion. -- Chad Nelson Oak Circle Software, Inc. * * *

1 0

[locale] Formal review of Boost.Locale library EXTENDED
by Chad Nelson 15 Apr '11

15 Apr '11

There have been only a handful of reviews of the proposed Boost.Locale library to date, and several people have requested more time to provide theirs, so the formal review of the Boost.Locale library has been extended. The deadline for reviews is now 11:59pm UTC on Friday, April 22nd. For those in the Western hemisphere, remember that that's earlier than it might seem -- 7:59pm in New York, 4:59 in Los Angeles. I'll accept late reviews until I complete the report on Saturday morning, but please try to get yours in earlier. Writing a review ================ If you feel this is an interesting library, then please submit your review to the developer list (preferably), or to the review manager (me). Here are some questions you might want to answer in your review: - - 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? And finally, every review should answer this question: - - Do you think the library should be accepted as a Boost library? Be sure to say this explicitly so that your other comments don't obscure your overall opinion. - -- Chad Nelson Oak Circle Software, Inc. * * *

1 0

[locale] Formal review of Boost.Local library -- need reviews!
by Chad Nelson 14 Apr '11

14 Apr '11

The final day of the Boost.Locale formal review is scheduled to be Saturday, and though there has been a lot of discussion, so far only one complete review has been submitted. If you're planning to review it, please don't delay. Writing a review ================ If you feel this is an interesting library, then please submit your review to the developer list (preferably), or to the review manager (me). Here are some questions you might want to answer in your review: - 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? And finally, every review should answer this question: - Do you think the library should be accepted as a Boost library? Be sure to say this explicitly so that your other comments don't obscure your overall opinion. -- Chad Nelson Oak Circle Software, Inc. * * *

1 0

[locale] Formal review of Boost.Locale library starts tomorrow
by Chad Nelson 06 Apr '11

06 Apr '11

The formal review of the Boost.Locale library by Artyom Beilis starts tomorrow, April 7th, and is scheduled to last through April 16th. *************** * Its Purpose * *************** Boost.Locale provides thorough localization features to C++ programs by way of std::locale facets. Excerpted from the introduction: C++ offers a very good base for localization via the existing C++ locale facets [...] But these are very limited and sometimes buggy by design. Support for localization varies [...], and there are frequently incompatibilities between them. On the other hand, there is a great, well debugged, high quality, widely used ICU library that gives all of the goodies. But it has a very dated API that mimics Java behavior, completely ignores the STL, and provides a useful API only for UTF-16 encoded text, ignoring other popular Unicode encodings like UTF-8 and UTF-32 and limited but still popular national character sets like Latin1. Boost.Locale provides the natural glue between the C++ locales framework, iostreams, and the powerful ICU library. Although it can use the ICU library, it supports several other processing options as well. ******************* * Where to get it * ******************* You can find the "boost_locale_for_review" version here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/cppcms/files/boost_locale/ The HTML documentation can also be seen at: http://cppcms.sourceforge.net/boost_locale/html/index.html ******************** * Writing a review * ******************** The reviews and all comments should be submitted to the developers list, and the email should have "[locale]" at the beginning of the subject line to make sure it's not missed. Please explicitly state in your review whether the library should be accepted. The general review checklist: - 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? -- Chad Nelson Oak Circle Software, Inc. * * *

1 0