- Boost-announce - lists.boost.org

[review] Fusion Library Accepted
by Ronald Garcia 05 Jun '06

05 Jun '06

Dear All, I am pleased to announce that the Fusion compile-time/run-time hybrid heterogeneous container and algorithm library by Joel de Guzman and Dan Marsden has been accepted into Boost. The library received 7 YES votes and 0 NO votes, with one abstention. Detailed Review Comments ------------------------ The following comments refer to issues that the library authors should address prior to merging the library into CVS: * Documentation: Many of the reviewers stated that they would like to see more tutorial documentation that demonstrates not only what the particular constructs in Fusion do, but also how they are expected to be used. A reasonably concise motivating example has been requested. It has already been pointed out that Fusion is used for some other boost libraries. A well-developed and self-contained case study of when and how to use Fusion would be greatly appreciated. The relationship between this library and the current Boost.Tuple library, as well as Boost.Mpl, should be discussed. The reference documentation is quite thorough and detailed comments regarding them have already been addressed by the authors. However the notion of "views" requires greater documentation. The examples in the algorithm sections currently do little more than demonstrate the syntax by which they can be called. Examples that more specifically express intent would be a notable improvement. (see for example Matt Austern's "Generic Programming and the STL"). In general the documentation would benefit from copy-editing. * Several commented on the use of the name "pair" for the fusion type that has typedefs for two types but only contains the second type. Although the typedefs and member names are consistent with the std::pair object, the name "pair" is confusing. The compile-time/run-time hybrid nature of this library makes it difficult to find perfect metaphors for constructs in the library. In this case, it seems better to find a term for this template (and the concept that it models) that more directly states its purpose. The name "tag_of" would also benefit from renaming. * The behavior of Fusion functions in the face of argument-dependent lookup (ADL) is not well specified. This should be made explicit in the reference documentation. The following comments refer to issues that, while not mandatory, deserve consideration: * The library name "Fusion", though not arbitrary, says little about the library's purpose. There is precedent for this within boost, however. A name change is not mandatory for the library's acceptance, but it would be worth while for the authors to consider a more telling name. * The mechanism for extending Fusion with new containers and iterators is complex and involves implementing a number of components, especially regarding iterators. An adaptation layer that is analogous to the Boost.Iterator library would be a fine addition to Fusion. * It would be beneficial to supply Boost.Serialization support for the Fusion container types. I am sure, as mentioned, that the authors of this library would accept a volunteer to implement this functionality. I would like to thank all the people who reviewed the library, voted, and otherwise participated in the discussion. Congratulations to Joel and Dan and I look forward to seeing Fusion in the Boost CVS soon. Ron Garcia

1 0

[Announce] Physical Quantities System review (May 31 through June 9)
by fred bertsch 31 May '06

31 May '06

The review of Andy Little's Physical Quantities System begins today, May 31, 2006, and continues through June 9, 2006. Download: pqs_3_1_0 is the Official Boost Review version of pqs. (Please note that pqs_3_1_0 has a bug in one header. This can be either patched according to the latest release notes, "relnotes.txt" available from http://tinyurl.com/7m5l8 or alternatively download pqs_3_1_1, which is basically equivalent to pqs_3_1_0, except the bug has been fixed there. Description PQS (Physical Quantities System) is designed to replace the use of floating point types for modelling physical quantities in C++ programs. Advantages include automated dimensional analysis checking, automatic unit conversions, self documentation of code and uniform mechanisms for dealing with physical quantities overall, allowing better interoperability, accuracy and repeatability among engineering, physics and trade applications. The library will ultimately consist of various types for modelling quantities in different situations. The t1_quantity, which is the first to be implemented, performs all its dimensional analysis checks as well as parts of its unit conversion calculations, at compile time rather than runtime, for maximum efficiency. PQS is designed with a firm commitment to the SI system, as being the internationally agreed preferred system of units. A reasonable selection of common quantities and units is included in the review version for demonstration purposes. The intent is to expand on this to include all the common quantities mentioned in Appendix B.8 and B.9 of the NIST SI document: http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/pdf/sp811.pdf The library also defines a selection of physical constants again intended as a flavour of the constants that would be included in a full library implementation as outlined in: http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/pdf/chart1.pdf Review questions: Please always explicitly state in your review, whether you think the library should be accepted into Boost. You might want to comment on the following questions: - 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? -Fred Bertsch

1 0

[Boost Review] Property Tree Library accepted
by Thorsten Ottosen 20 May '06

20 May '06

Dear All, I have the great pleasure to announce that Marcin Kalicinski's Property Tree Library have been accepted into Boost (www.boost.org) The votes were as follows: - yes: 11 - no: 3 Congratulations to Marcin! I would like to thank the following people for doing a review: Sebastian Redl Matt Doyle Pavel Vozenilek Ivan Vecerina Gennadie Rozenal Tom Brinkman Darren Cook Alexander Belyakov John Maddock Daniel Wesslén Jose Paul A Bristow Jeff Hardy. Matias Capeletto I apologize if I have overlooked anybody. Also thanks to the *countless* people who participated in the dicsussion during the review: none mentioned, none forgotten (as we say in Denmark). Below follows more comments on the issues raised in the review. best regards Thorsten Ottosen, review manager Detailed review comments ------------------------ The general feedback was positive, with one reviewer even said he would use the library even if it was not accepted into Boost. Experienced boosters saw the general quality of the submission as higher than average. There was also some strong concerns by a few long-time boost members, most notably because of a potential overlap with Boost.Program Options. I think in the end it was fairly clear that the two libraries take different approaches to the problem. Even so, the property-tree library should clearly state the limitations of its program option parser component and via its documentation refer to Boost.Program Options for a more scallable solution. There were quite a big number of people that thought the library could and should be further polished / enhanced. There is nothing new to this, and I hope Marcin will work hard to incorporate/try out as many of the ideas from the review. (There have been quite a few libraries which went through substantial changes after the review and before the post-review.) When Marcin feels his design/functionality is rock-solid, he should do a post-review on the developer list to clear up remaining matters. Here's a list of ideas that should be considered for the post-review: 1. documentation needs smaller topics, more examples and syntax highlighting 2. implementation: it could be a possibility to use Boost.Multi Index to give a space-optimal implementation. We should not underestime the tasks the library vould be used for, so space/performce does matter. The idea of flattening queries with wildcard syntax "prop.foo.*" might be something to look into 3. support for non-standard strings was seen as a must 4. the issue of preserving white-spaces and comments was important to some people, which is understandable if the library is used to read and write config files 5. serialization support would be nice 6. there should be clear statements on the limitations of the supplied parsers 7. many would like to see the incorporation of a path concept 8. many were intersted in even more syntactic sugar to make the library even easier to use, eg. by using (),[] etc cleverly. Thanks again to Marcin for his submission. -Thorsten

1 0

[Announce] Boost Installer for Visual C++ 7.1/8.0
by David Abrahams 17 May '06

17 May '06

The following message is a courtesy copy of an article that has been posted to gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel,gmane.comp.lib.boost.user as well. Boost Consulting is pleased to announce the availability of a Windows installer for the current Boost release (1.33.1). See: http://www.boost-consulting.com/download.html Thanks to everyone who made this possible, including Rene Rivera, Eric Niebler, Devin Smith, and especially to Daniel Wallin, who applied most of the elbow grease. Enjoy! -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com

1 0

[review][pimpl_ptr] Pimpl Pointer review begins
by Rene Rivera 15 May '06

15 May '06

The review of the pimpl_ptr library by Asger Mangaard starts today, Monday May 15th, 2006, and runs through May 25th, 2006. (Boost Reviews RSS feed <http://tinyurl.com/ogpj6>) Pimpl Pointer ------------- :Author: Asger Mangaard :Download: Boost Sandbox (http://boost-consulting.com/vault/) as "pimpl_ptr.zip". Direct download at <http://tinyurl.com/m66ox>. :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 greatly ease the implementation of the pimpl idiom. Review questions ---------------- Please always explicitly state in your review, whether you think the library should be accepted into Boost. You might want to comment on the following questions: - 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? Enjoy, Rene. -- -- Grafik - Don't Assume Anything -- Redshift Software, Inc. - http://redshift-software.com -- rrivera/acm.org - grafik/redshift-software.com -- 102708583/icq - grafikrobot/aim - grafikrobot/yahoo

1 0

[review] Fusion review begins
by Ronald Garcia 10 May '06

10 May '06

The review of Joel de Guzman's Fusion library begins today, May 1, 2006, and continues through May 10, 2006. :Download: http://spirit.sourceforge.net/dl_more/fusion_v2.zip :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. Review questions ================ Please always explicitly state in your review, whether you think the library should be accepted into Boost. You might want to comment on the following questions: - 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? Cheers, Ron

1 1

[Boost Review] Property Tree Library
by Thorsten Ottosen 19 Apr '06

19 Apr '06

Dear All, I have the great pleasure to announce that the formal boost-review of Marcin Kalicinski Property Tree Library begins now (the 18th of April) and runs through the 27th of April. Introduction ------------ This fairly high-level library consists of the following facilities: 1. a generic recursive property-tree data-structure 2. generic conversions to/from this data-structure from/to a. xml-files b. ini-flies c. json-files d. windows registry files As an example of how powerful the library is, consider this tutorial: - http://kaalus.atspace.com/ptree/doc/index.html#five_minute_tutorial The library may be downloaded from - the boost file vault http://boost-consulting.com/vault/ (property_tree_rev5.zip) - tinyurl: http://tinyurl.com/fkt7r - boost sandbox: http://www.boost.org/more/mailing_lists.htm#sandbox (look in boost/property_tree and libs/property_tree) The documentation may be viewed online at - http://kaalus.atspace.com/ptree/doc/index.html If your find the above interesting, please consider submitting a review to the boost developer mailing list: - http://www.boost.org/more/mailing_lists.htm#main You might end up using several hours on a review, but the end result could be a superb library that will save you weeks of work. Notes for reviewers ------------------- When writing your review, you may wish to consider the following questions: * 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. In particular, consider if you can answer the following questions: - was the library suitable for your daily xml-tasks? If not, what was missing? - was the library's performance good enough? If not, can you suggest improvements? - was the library's design flexible enough? If not, how would you suggest it should be redesigned to broaden its scope of use? best regards Thorsten Ottosen, Review Manager

1 0

[review] promotion traits - result
by Tobias Schwinger 12 Apr '06

12 Apr '06

Dear Boost community, Alexander Nasonov's Promotion Traits have been accepted conditionally into Boost with 4/4 positive votes. The conditions are - an example must be added to the documentation (plus accompanying source code for the example folder), - the reference should be clarified (cv-qualification, bit fields) - further conditions might arise from the merger with the extended library (TypeTraits) and are subject to synchronization with the library maintainer (John Maddock). Thanks to Alexander for the submission and to our reviewers for their work! Regards, Tobias (Review Manager)

1 0

[review] promotion traits - review period extended until April 9.
by Tobias Schwinger 06 Apr '06

06 Apr '06

Dear users & members of Boost, I decided to extend the review period of the fast-track review for Promotion Traits until April 9 because there were only three reviews until now. That is, you have another three days to submit your evaluation of the proposed Boost software. Cheer up, it's a small & fast-to-track submission! We're very much looking forward to your reviews. Download URL ============ http://cpp-experiment.sourceforge.net/promote-20050917.tar.gz About the submission ==================== The Promotion Traits extend Boost.TypeTraits with templates that compute the type after promotion has been applied. Example: // given template<typename T> struct some_algorithm; template<> struct some_algorithm<int> { [...] }; // [...] more specializations // , [...] some_algorithm< typename integral_promotion<T>::type > [...] // makes some_algorithm work for any type T that promotes to an integer // (that is enums and smaller integral types) without the need for // additional specialization Review questions ================ Please always explicitly state in your review, whether you think the library should be accepted into Boost. You might want to comment on the following questions: - 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, Tobias (Review Manager)

1 0

[review] promotion traits
by Tobias Schwinger 01 Apr '06

01 Apr '06

The review of Alexander Nasonov's Promotion Traits start today. Since it's a small contribution it will be fast-track reviewed and the end of the review period is scheduled for April 6. Download URL ============ http://cpp-experiment.sourceforge.net/promote-20050917.tar.gz About the submission ==================== The Promotion Traits extend Boost.TypeTraits with templates that compute the type after promotion has been applied. Example: // given template<typename T> struct some_algorithm; template<> struct some_algorithm<int> { [...] }; // [...] more specializations // , [...] some_algorithm< typename integral_promotion<T>::type > [...] // makes some_algorithm work for any type T that promotes to an integer // (that is enums and smaller integral types) without the need for // additional specialization Review questions ================ Please always explicitly state in your review, whether you think the library should be accepted into Boost. You might want to comment on the following questions: - 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, Tobias (Review Manager)

1 0