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Histogram Review Results
by Mateusz Loskot 22 Oct '18

22 Oct '18

Hi Everyone, Please, welcome the Histogram library to the Boost collection! Thank you Hans for submitting a high-quality library for review. Thank you to the reviewers as well as those who just exchanged their comments on numerous aspects of the library and participated in the fruitful discussions. Among reviewers, we can recognise veteran Boost contributors and authors as well as experts in the fields of statistics, raster analysis, including authors of histogram-oriented software packages. ---------------------------------------- Official reviews and votes: ---------------------------------------- 1. Klemens David Morgenstern - ACCEPT 2. Jim Pivarski (off-list) - ACCEPT 3. Bjorn Reese - ACCEPT conditionally 4. Steven Watanabe - ACCEPT conditionally 5. Alex Hagen-Zanker - ACCEPT Non-review participations: 1. Andrea Bocci (off-list) 2. degski 3. Glen Fernandes (off-list) 4. Gavin Lambert 5. Seth 6. Mateusz Loskot ---------------------------------------- Acceptance conditions ---------------------------------------- Two reviews stated conditions which are important fulfilled: Bjorn Reese - Reference documentation is finalized Steven Watanabe - Various exception safety and memory issues must be fixed. - The reference documentation must be completed. Specifically, various preconditions, requirements, and assumptions must be made explicit. I believe those are not controversial at all and Hans is also interested in addressing those requests. ---------------------------------------- Concerns and comments ---------------------------------------- Jim Pivarski mentioned importance of profile plots as fundamental enough that they should be part of the feature set. In short term, the profile plots can be implemented as a new storage type, using the extension capabilities. Similarly, some concurrent applications would need atomic-valued bins, but these, too, can be storage types. Bjorn Reese pointed out some aspects of the design that makes the library not work very well with STL algorithms. Bjorn strongly recommended that the default storage policy is changed to remove some of those limitations. Steven Watanabe provided Hans with large number of very detailed comments and fixes (eg. do not call destructor which has been fixed), suggestions how to improve run-fail tests and serialization tests. Alex Hagen-Zanker commented that range-based for-loops support could be improved, suggested to provide separate ranges or views for certain histogram access scenarios. Another important theme of Alex' review was Histogram applicability for moving window type analysis. Then, Alex requested clarification on choosing variance based on the Poisson distribution instead of the binomial distribution. degski suggested to look for some "low hanging fruits" in C++14 and/or C++17, the library could potentially benefit from, pushing the 'modern C++' trait of the library even further. Gavin Lambert suggested to allow use of quantity types like Boost.Units. Glen Fernandes mentioned he would raise allocator model support issues or relaxing the requirement that the pointer must be a raw pointer of type value_type*. Glen mentioned he may even be available to help. Hans has already addressed many of the suggestions and issues or planned related features for future releases of the library. Issues resulting from the feedback received during the review can be tracked and further discussed on GitHub, labelled with boost-review: https://github.com/HDembinski/histogram/labels/boost-review ---------------------------------------- The Upsides ---------------------------------------- There were lots of great things said about the Histogram library: - design: excellent, clean, simple and extensible in principle - useful and well-designed features - geared towards readability and performance - very good documentation ---------------------------------------- Final Thoughts ---------------------------------------- Reviewers are worth their weight in gold nowadays. Once again, I'd like to thank all participants for great amount of quality feedback that already led to important improvements in the Histogram library in very timely manner - thank you Hans! The Histogram library is a valuable addition to Boost. Best regards, -- Mateusz Loskot Review Manager for the proposed Boost.Histogram

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Formal Review of Proposed Boost.Histogram Library is FINISHED
by Mateusz Loskot 27 Sep '18

27 Sep '18

Dear Boost Community, The formal review of Hans Dembinski's Histogram library has been completed. Here is the quantitative summary of feedback received: * Reviews: 1. Klemens David Morgenstern 2. Jim Pivarski (off-list via e-mail to Hans) 3. Björn Reese 4. Steven Watanabe 5. Alex Hagen-Zanker * Non-review participations: 1. degski 2. Gavin Lambert 3. Seth 4. Mateusz Loskot I believe I've collected the names/numbers right, but please let me know ASAP if you think otherwise. I'd like to thank all the participants for their time and efforts. I'm sure Hans received lots of valuable comments and suggestions. FYI, the discussion threads are still open for new posts. Those won't be taken into consideration towards the review result though. I will do my best to announce the review results next week. Mateusz Review Manager for the proposed Boost.Histogram -- Mateusz Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net

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Formal Review of Proposed Boost.Histogram Library - LAST DAY
by Mateusz Loskot 26 Sep '18

26 Sep '18

Dear Boost Community, According to the review schedule [1], the formal review of Hans Dembinski's Histogram library lasts until the end of TODAY. Please, anyone who is aiming to post a review, hurry up! If there are members who have planned to post a review and still wish to do it but require more time, please speak up now indicating how much time you'd need. [1] https://www.boost.org/community/review_schedule.html Best regards, -- Mateusz Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net

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Twenty years and time to retire
by Beman Dawes 22 Sep '18

22 Sep '18

The idea behind Boost was hatched in March, 1998, and the proposal document <https://www.boost.org/users/proposal.pdf> was released May 6, 1998. That makes Boost twenty years old, and makes me twenty years older. It is high time I retire from Boost; I haven't been able to contribute for some time now. Thanks to all of you who made Boost such an overwhelming success in the past and will drive Boost forward into a bright future! --Beman

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Formal Review of Proposed Boost.Histogram Library Starts TODAY
by Mateusz Loskot 17 Sep '18

17 Sep '18

Dear Boost Community, The formal review of Hans Dembinski's Histogram library starts TODAY, the September 17th, and lasts until September 26th, unless an extension occurs. =========== What is it? =========== Histogram is a header-only C++11 library, provides multi-dimensional histogram template class for counting, statistics and data exploration. The histogram class interface has been carefully designed to make the library * offer simple and convenient default behaviour * easy to learn and safe to use * convenient to use for one- as well as multi-dimensional analysis * compatible with STL algorithms * dependant only on C++11 standard library and optionally on Boost The author followed the "Don't pay for what you don't use" principle. The histogram class is customisable through policy classes, but the default policies were carefully crafted so that most users do not need to customize anything. The default policies guarantee the histogram to be safe to use as a black box, memory efficient, and very fast, where safety is related to overflow prevention and large values capping. This guarantees is one of unique features of the library in comparison to other implementations. The histogram class comes in two variants, which share a common interface: * static variant is optimised at compile-time to provide maximum performance, at the cost of reduced runtime flexibility and potentially larger executables; * dynamic variant is a bit slower, but configurable at run-time. Both variants of the histogram class provide optional serialization support implemented with Boost.Serialization. The library itself is header-only and the tests as well as examples can be built using both, Boost.Build and CMake. There are no dependencies required other than C++11 compiler. Optional dependencies include the GNU Scientific Library (GSL) and the ROOT framework from CERN which are needed the corresponding speed test programs used for performance comparison. A note on history: The library was first announced to the Boost community in May, 2016 [1] and the author received extensive feedback. Then, after a year of work posted second request for comments in April, 2017 [2]. =================== Getting the library =================== Checkout the `master` branch from the library git repository: https://github.com/HDembinski/histogram/ NOTE: The author follows the library submission process [3]: the master branch remains frozen for the period of the formal review, modifications in response to feedback should go to `develop` branch and big items may be worked and discussed via opening an issue on GitHub. Documentation: http://hdembinski.github.io/histogram/doc/html/ Website: http://hdembinski.github.io/histogram/ ================ Writing a review ================ Please, follow the official Boost formal review procedure [4]. If you feel this is an interesting library, then please submit your review to the Boost developer list (preferably), or the review manager to mateusz (at) loskot (dot) net. 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. If needed, refer to the Boost Library Requirements and Guidelines [5]. Please, give constructive criticism! [1] https://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2016/05/229389.php [2] https://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2017/04/234410.php [3] https://www.boost.org/development/submissions.html#Review [4] https://www.boost.org/community/reviews.html [5] https://www.boost.org/development/requirements.html Mateusz Review Manager for the proposed Boost.Histogram -- Mateusz Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net

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[release] Boost 1.68.0
by Marshall Clow 08 Aug '18

08 Aug '18

Release 1.68.0 of the Boost C++ Libraries is now available. These open-source libraries work well with the C++ Standard Library, and are usable across a broad spectrum of applications. The Boost license encourages both commercial and non-commercial use. This release contains 1 new libraryand numerous enhancements and bug fixes for existing libraries. For details, including download links, see <https://www.boost.org/users/news/version_1.68.0> You can also download directly from: <https://dl.bintray.com/boostorg/release/1.68.0/> To install this release on your system, see <https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/release/more/getting_started/index.html> Thanks to everyone who participated in this release. Thanks, -- The Boost Release Team

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[boost] Yap formally accepted into Boost
by Louis Dionne via Boost 04 Jun '18

04 Jun '18

Dear Boost, This message is to announce that Yap (which had been conditionally accepted [1]) is now accepted into Boost, since the conditions for acceptance have been met. The conditions for acceptance were: - Improve the documentation to satisfy Brook Milligan and myself (done) - A single macro for symmetric binary operators (done in https://github.com/tzlaine/yap/issues/22) - Get rid of external dependencies checked into repository (done) - Boost.Build (done in https://github.com/tzlaine/yap/issues/52) Congratulations Zach! Louis Dionne Review manager for Boost.Yap [1]: https://lists.boost.org/boost-announce/2018/03/0540.php _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost

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[release] Boost 1.67.0
by Daniel James 14 Apr '18

14 Apr '18

Release 1.67.0 of the Boost C++ Libraries is now available. These open-source libraries work well with the C++ Standard Library, and are usable across a broad spectrum of applications. The Boost license encourages both commercial and non-commercial use. This release contains 2 new libraries and numerous enhancements and bug fixes for existing libraries. For details, including download links, see <https://www.boost.org/users/news/version_1.67.0> You can also download directly from: <https://dl.bintray.com/boostorg/release/1.67.0/> To install this release on your system, see <https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/release/more/getting_started/index.html> Thanks to everyone who participated in this release. Thanks, -- The Boost Release Team

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[boost] [Boost.Yap] Review results
by Louis Dionne via Boost 01 Mar '18

01 Mar '18

Dear Boost, I am pleased to announce that the Yap library is CONDITIONALLY ACCEPTED into Boost. I counted the following formal reviews: - Alex Hagen-Zanker: REJECT / CONDITIONAL ACCEPT - Barrett Adair: ACCEPT - Brook Milligan: CONDITIONAL ACCEPT - John Fletcher: ACCEPT - Paul Fultz II: ACCEPT - Steven Watanabe: ACCEPT I'd like to thank everyone who participated to the review for their feedback, and also Zach Laine for his submission. The following is a summary of the main issues that were raised during the review: - Contextual evaluation of terminals The concern was that there was no way of evaluating an expression tree with a custom context other than to first transform it with a custom transform, and then evaluate it. This, however, requires encoding the recursion into the transform even when we only want to modify terminals. After a lot of discussion, everybody seemed to agree that the following would be desirable (paraphrasing Steven): `transform_evaluate` would behave exactly like `transform`, except that the default behavior for nodes that are not handled by the context is to evaluate the operators instead of building a new expression. Zach fixed that in https://github.com/tzlaine/yap/issues/63 by introducing a new transform called `evaluation()` which evaluates terminals, and the ability to pass multiple transforms `t1`, ..., `tN` to `transform`. The first matching transform is executed, and `transform` will copy-and-recurse if no transforms match. `transform_evaluate(expr, tform)` can then be implemented as `yap::transform(expr, tform, yap::evaluation())`. - Auto-unwrapping of terminals in transform and automatic application of terminal transforms before unwrapping There was a concern that automatically unwrapping terminals in transforms and applying terminal transforms before unwrapping would result in counter intuitive behavior. After some discussion, it was determined that automatic application of transforms before unwrapping could indeed lead to surprising results and was removed. However, unwrapping of terminals is necessary to keep the matching of terminals reasonable, so it was kept. I am comfortable with that decision, as the unwrapping of terminals, which leads to a very intuitive way of matching terminals, was one of the features that sprung to me as being a great usability boost when I first looked at the library. - Positional placeholders should stay or go? Some of the reviewers felt like it was not desirable to provide positional placeholders as part of Yap, because those aren't the primary purpose of the library and C++14 obsoletes them with lambdas. Other reviewers felt like they were in fact very useful and shouldn't be removed. Since no clear consensus could be reached, no acceptance condition is attached to this issue. However, I personally favor the removal of placeholders from the core API on the basis of minimality. I would like to encourage Zach to check whether their removal would result in API simplifications; if so, I would encourage (but not require) their removal, at Zach's discretion. - Documentation The documentation is not sufficiently extensive, and takes too much for granted from the reader. This was raised by a couple of reviewers and it has been my largest problem with the library so far. More on this below. - The eval_xxx customization points. Nobody liked them, and they are already gone. - BOOST_YAP_CONVERSION_OPERATOR_TEMPLATE Nobody liked it, and it is already gone. - Short-circuiting of && and || in evaluate Steven brought up the fact that `yap::evaluate` would not short-circuit the evaluation of && and ||. This issue was mooted when customization points were removed. Also, the new `evaluation()` transform, which could suffer from the same short-circuiting problems, doesn't because it was implemented properly. - Support for Boost.Build is missing. - Hana vs not Hana Full disclosure: I am the author of Boost.Hana. A couple of reviewers raised concerns with Hana being part of the public interface. The main concern seemed to be about MSVC not being able to compile Hana, and hence Yap being unusable on MSVC. While I agree that MSVC is a big player, I believe that should not dictate what all Boost libraries do. Some libraries are meant to bridge gaps with older compilers, some libraries are cutting edge. Yap is the latter, and that's fine. The MSVC folks are working hard on their C++ conformance, and they will eventually get there. Also, it is likely that Hana wouldn't be the barrier anyway: Yap relies a lot on SFINAE and MSVC is known to be poor at it. Many of the features that one would likely want to use when using Yap are also not too well supported by MSVC, so users would probably hit limitations there anyway. Plus, as soon as MSVC is close enough, I'll start working on Hana's side to support it. Taking my review manager hat off for a second, I'd also like to point out that Yap is exactly the kind of use case that Hana was built for. Just like MPL was (and is) used in many libraries' implementation and APIs, I don't see a problem with using Hana in Yap's API, since that is the right tool for the job. That being said, if Zach wishes to explore using Hana's concepts (like hana::Sequence) to conceptify his API, I encourage him to do so. This may make it possible to use any tuple-like sequence for the children of an expression, thereby reducing the coupling between the two libraries. If Zach wants to explore using Fusion instead of Hana, that is also an option that would make MSVC support achievable. - A single macro for symmetric binary operators It was brought up that there's no macro to define both `arg <op> expr` and `expr <op> arg` at once. I believe this was initially done to avoid potential conflicts with the member variants, which already provide `expr <op> arg`. I believe it should still be possible to do it, since, as Steven said, most of the time a user will need symmetric behavior anyway. - External dependencies checked-into the repository The library includes internal copies of some of its dependencies, which is unusual for a Boost library. Zach said it wasn't his intent to put the library into Boost that way if it were accepted. To see all the issues that were raised during the review, you can search for tickets labeled with `Boost Review` on GitHub: https://github.com/tzlaine/yap/issues?q=label%3A%22Boost+Review%22 Based on the concerns above, the following lists the conditions for acceptance: - Documentation In my opinion, this was the biggest concern to be addressed. A lot of progress was made during and after the review, but I still think the documentation can be improved and made more complete. I especially believe that integrating more examples inside the "tutorial" (not just at the end) and introducing new concepts more gradually would help readers that are not already expression template gurus. It is very difficult to set a clear action item for "improving the documentation". For this reason, Brook Milligan and I will work with Zach to define what it means for the documentation to meet this acceptance condition. Brook was kind enough to agree to this when I asked him in a private communication. - A single macro for symmetric binary operators The library must provide a way to define symmetric binary operators in one go. Exactly how this can be achieved and whether we should be able to SFINAE-constrain the arguments is left to Zach's discretion. - External dependencies The external dependencies must not be packaged with the library itself. Another mechanism should be used; I leave that mechanism unspecified, but it should be possible to test the library using the usual Boost.Build workflow (e.g. an ExternalPackage download that would only work in CMake is not acceptable). - Boost.Build Yap needs to support Boost.Build like all the other Boost libraries. I will post an update to this list when the conditions of the review are met. If they wish to do so, reviewers can then verify that the conditions are met in a satisfactory fashion and the library will automatically be accepted unless someone objects. I would like to thank everyone who participated in the review, and congratulations to Zach for his library. Regards, Louis Dionne _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost

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We need more mentors for GSoC
by David Bellot 14 Feb '18

14 Feb '18

Hi Boost community, we have already a few mentors, but we need more. If you're interested working with top-level C++ students from all around the world, please contact me and I'll add you to the list of mentors. We need more mentors now ! Best regards, David

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