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Boost.Fiber mini-review September 4-13
by Nat Goodspeed 04 Sep '15

04 Sep '15

Hi all, The mini-review of Boost.Fiber by Oliver Kowalke begins today, Friday September 4th, and closes Sunday September 13th. It was reviewed in January 2014; the verdict at that time was "not in its present form." Since then Oliver has substantially improved documentation, performance, library customization and the underlying implementation, and is bringing the library back for mini-review. The substance of the library API remains the same, which is why a mini-review is appropriate. The Fiber library now requires a C++14-conforming compiler. I will monitor reviews and discussion on both the boost-users@ list and the boost@ developers' list. Please include at least "fiber" and "review" in your mail subject, e.g. by replying to this message. (Please reply to only ONE list, however.) Thank you for your interest and your feedback! ----------------------------------------------------- About the library: Boost.Fiber provides a framework for micro-/userland-threads (fibers) scheduled cooperatively. The API contains classes and functions to manage and synchronize fibers similar to Boost.Thread. Each fiber has its own stack. A fiber can save the current execution state, including all registers and CPU flags, the instruction pointer, and the stack pointer and later restore this state. The idea is to have multiple execution paths running on a single thread using a sort of cooperative scheduling (versus threads, which are preemptively scheduled). The running fiber decides explicitly when it should yield to allow another fiber to run (context switching). Boost.Fiber internally uses execution_context from Boost.Context; the classes in this library manage, schedule and, when needed, synchronize those contexts. A context switch between threads usually costs thousands of CPU cycles on x86, compared to a fiber switch with a few hundred cycles. A fiber can only run on a single thread at any point in time. docs: http://olk.github.io/libs/fiber/doc/html/index.html git: https://github.com/olk/boost-fiber --------------------------------------------------- Please always state in your review whether you think the library should be accepted as a Boost library! Additionally please consider giving feedback on the following general topics: - What is your evaluation of the design? - What is your evaluation of the implementation? - What is your evaluation of the documentation? - What is your evaluation of the potential usefulness of the library? - Did you try to use the library? With what compiler? Did you have any problems? - How much effort did you put into your evaluation? A glance? A quick reading? In-depth study? - Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain? Nat Goodspeed Boost.Fiber Review Manager ________________________________

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[boost] [http] Boost.Http review report
by Bjorn Reese 27 Aug '15

27 Aug '15

The outcome of the formal review of Boost.Http is that the library is NOT accepted for inclusion into Boost this time. Below I will first summarize the main themes running through the review, and afterwards I will make some recommendations about how to proceed from here. The following reviews were posted: - Antony Polukhin: No - Darren Cook: No - David Sankel: No - Lee Clagett: No - Niall Douglas: Yes, conditionally - Roland Bock: No - Tom Kent: No The discussions were constructive and offered much valuable feedback. There was a general consensus that Boost ought have a HTTP library, but that Boost.Http was too incomplete in its present state. Many reviewers mentioned the disconnect between their expectations and what the library offered. There were several suggestions for alternative names for the library to better reflect the feature-set it offers. Boost.Http currently only provides a server-side API, but the reviewers felt that a client-side API would be usable to more users. There was also a recurring request for Boost.Http to be a header-only library. The HTTP parser currently used is not header-only and that is the main obstacle towards a header-only Boost.Http library. Some of the discussion revolved around what level of abstraction would be appropriate for Boost.Http. The views ranged from wanting higher- level APIs all the way down to simply wanting a HTTP parser/generator and then leave all the socket and buffer management up to the user. Regarding the HTTP parser/generator, there is no reason why it cannot be a separate Boost library. However, Vinicius correctly pointed out that this is insufficient for a HTTP server framework that handles multipleback-ends (e.g. HTTP/2, FastCGI, or WebSocket). By implication it cannot handle HTTP upgrade requests either. Some reviewers also felt that HTTP/2 should be part of Boost.Http, partly because that would demonstrate the extensibility of the current design, and partly because the library would be in a stronger position to attract users if it offers more than its competitors. There was concern about whether or not the Boost.Http API can be extended to HTTP/2. The main challenge with HTTP/2 is fitting multiplexing into the API. Vinicius suggested that there should be a http::socket per multiplexed channel, so it will be transparent to the user if several of his http::sockets to the same remote endpoint are transported via the same TCP socket. This will keep the API clean when extended to HTTP/2. Boost.Http currently creates an associative array for all header fields. One reviewer explored the idea of using an incremental (push or pull) HTTP parser as part of the API to let users decide which header fields to copy and which to discard. There was a general consensus that more examples are needed, and that the tutorial should have smaller examples. The Boost.Http code base currently builds with CMake. This must be converted into Boost.Build before being integrated into the Boost code base. Several other third-party tools were suggested, but as these are not requirements for inclusion into Boost I will leave the decision to the author. As for the future, I hope that Vinicius is not too discourage by the current rejection, and that he will consider re-submitting the library at a later stage. Judging from the reviews, the following additions will make a future submission more likely to succeed: 1. Involve the community more during the development. This will both solicit earlier feedback on the design, and help to align community expectation. 2. Provide a client-side API. 3. Design higher-level APIs on top of the low-level APIs. 4. Better documentation and more examples. I also hope that people in the community will consider contributing to the library. For example, a good opportunity is to help creating the higher-level APIs. Another opportunity is to help with the (header- only, possibly incremental) HTTP parser/generator, which could be a separate library. _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost

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[boost] [afio] Formal review of Boost.AFIO
by Ahmed Charles 22 Aug '15

22 Aug '15

The formal review of the Boost.AFIO library starts, August 21st and ends on Monday August 31st. Boost.AFIO provides a portable API implementing synchronous and asynchronous race-free filesystem and scatter-gather file i/o. It requires a minimum of C++ 11. It has minimum dependencies on a Filesystem TS and a Networking TS implementation (e.g. Boost.Filesystem and Boost.ASIO). Backends are provided for the Windows NT kernel and POSIX. The utility of a portable library providing strong concurrent race guarantees about filesystem and file i/o can be seen in its tutorial where a transactional ACID key-value store is built from first principles. Boost.AFIO was brought to Boost as part of GSoC 2013 and Niall Douglas has continued to develop and improve the library since then, generating two internal implementation libraries Boost.APIBind and Boost.Monad which are expected to be separately brought for Boost review in 2016. The documentation can be found here: https://boostgsoc13.github.io/boost.afio/doc/html/afio.html The source code can be found here: https://github.com/BoostGSoC13/boost.afio/tree/boost-peer-review Online web compiler playpen can be found here: http://melpon.org/wandbox/permlink/DR8wCpu5Rl20GMdM? Please answer the following questions: 1. Should Boost.AFIO be accepted into Boost? Please state all conditions for acceptance explicity. 2. What is your evaluation of the design? 3. What is your evaluation of the implementation? 4. What is your evaluation of the documentation? 5. What is your evaluation of the potential usefulness of the library? 6. Did you try to use the library? With what compiler? Did you have any problems? 7. How much effort did you put into your evaluation? A glance? A quick reading? In-depth study? 8. Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain? _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost

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[boost] Boost 1.59.0 has been released
by Marshall Clow 13 Aug '15

13 Aug '15

Release 1.59.0 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 two new libraries and numerous enhancements and bug fixes for existing libraries. New Libraries * Convert: An extendible and configurable type-conversion framework, from Vladimir Batov. * Coroutine2: from Oliver Kowalke For details, including download links, see http://www.boost.org/users/news/version_1.59.0 You can also download directly from SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/boost/files/boost/1.59.0/ To install this release on your system, see http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/release/more/getting_started/index.html Thanks, --The Boost release team Vladimir Prus Rene Rivera Marshall Clow Eric Niebler Daniel James Beman Dawes _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost

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[boost] [http] Formal review of Boost.Http
by Bjorn Reese 07 Aug '15

07 Aug '15

Dear Boost and ASIO communities. The formal review of Vinícius dos Santos Oliveira's Boost.Http library starts today, August 7th and ends on Sunday August 16th. Boost.Http is designed for various forms of modern HTTP interaction, from normal HTTP request, over HTTP chunking and pipelining, to upgrading to other web protocols like WebSocket. This library builds on top of Boost.ASIO, and follows the threading model of ASIO. The two basic building-blocks are http::socket, which is socket that talks HTTP, and http::message with contains HTTP meta-data and body information. You can use these building-blocks to build a HTTP server that fits your exact needs; for instance, an embedded HTTP server for a ReST API. Boost.Http comes with a light-weight HTTP server and a static file server. Currently, Boost.Http is limited to server-side interaction, but the design principles used extends to client-side as well. Boost.Http was originally developed as part of GSoC 2014 and Vinícius has continued to develop and improve the library since then. The documentation can be found here: http://boostgsoc14.github.io/boost.http/ The source code can be found here: https://github.com/BoostGSoC14/boost.http The source code is build using CMake, but Boost.Build is in the pipeline (already done for documentation.) Please answer the following questions: 1. Should Boost.Http be accepted into Boost? Please state all conditions for acceptance explicity. 2. What is your evaluation of the design? 3. What is your evaluation of the implementation? 4. What is your evaluation of the documentation? 5. What is your evaluation of the potential usefulness of the library? 6. Did you try to use the library? With what compiler? Did you have any problems? 7. How much effort did you put into your evaluation? A glance? A quick reading? In-depth study? 8. Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain? _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost

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[Boost-users] Boost.DLL formal review result
by Vladimir Prus 24 Jul '15

24 Jul '15

The Boost.DLL library is accepted. Congratulations to Antony, and thanks for everybody who reviewed the library! The votes were as follows: - Ralf Globisch - Yes - Klaim - Joël Lamotte - Yes - Niall Douglas - Yes, conditionally - John P Fletcher - Yes - Bjorn Reese - Yes - Edward Diener - Yes - Rodrigo Madera - Yes - Richard - Yes I'd like to also thank Thomas Trummer, Rob Stewart and Ion Gaztañaga for their contribution to review. The key suggestions from the review are listed below. None is critical enough to become a formal prerequisite, or require a mini-review. The library can be added when Antony feels its ready. Naming ----------- There was a concern that "DLL" might sound windows specific, and search for best terminology. This does not seem all that important, as soon as documentation introduces the terminology it uses, and is consistent. OSX support ------------------- The library was found not to work on OSX; I believe this issue was already fixed off-list with help from Rodrigo. Documentation ---------------------- Several people requested improvements. Bjorn and John, in particular, pointed out specific issues. This seems to be the post important change prior to adding the library. Dependencies on Boost and system headers ---------------------------------------------------------------- It was suggested that the library does not depend on other Boost C++ Libraries. While it might be helpful to some users, I find it logically impossible for a Boost formal review to request that dependencies on Boost libraries be removed. It was also mentioned that Boost.DLL is header-only library and includes system headers that can bring a lot of symbols and maybe macros. I don't think an actual problem was reported, though, and there is no way to avoid the problem while staying header-only. It's up to the author to consider these suggestions and do something, or don't do anything. Continuous integration -------------------------------- There was a recommendation from Niall to improve CI of the library, including static analysis, valgrind, Windows CI, showing CI status in documentation and so forth. These are good suggestions. At the same time, they are not specific to Boost.DLL, and it's not the goal of a formal review to create new generic development process requirements. Many existing libraries of indisputably high quality do not have these requested mechanisms. Therefore, the author can act on these suggestions as he sees fit. Thanks, -- Vladimir Prus http://vladimirprus.com _______________________________________________ Boost-users mailing list Boost-users(a)lists.boost.org http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost-users

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Boost release 1.59.0 beta 1 is now available from SourceForge
by Marshall Clow 22 Jul '15

22 Jul '15

Boost release 1.59.0 beta 1 is now available from SourceForge See http://sourceforge.net/projects/boost/files/boost/1.59.0.beta.1/ For details of what's in the release, see http://www.boost.org/users/history/version_1_59_0.html. Note that the links to files on this web page are for the final release - use the SourceForge link above to get the beta files. Please download the beta, give it a try, and report any problems you encounter. Thanks, -- The Boost Release Team

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[boost] [review] Metaparse Review Result
by Christophe Henry 11 Jul '15

11 Jul '15

Hi all, First of all, the final result. Metaparse is formally unconditionally accepted into Boost. We had 11 reviews, all "Yes" votes. 2 "No" reviews based on formality were later reversed to a "Yes". The review was lively, with a general agreement that the library is very useful, the design of high quality and the documentation great. Here are some noticeable quotes which helped me take my decision: - "thank you Abel for submitting such an amazing library. The quality of the documentation and code is wonderful and it has been a pleasure to review Metaparse." (Michael Caisse) - (Design) "Of high quality. Based on the MPL paradigm, but I don't view this as a problem." (Peter Dimov) - "Part of the role of boost is to push compilers to the limit (and sometimes beyond). This library certainly has the capabilities to do so." (Roland Bock) Worth noticing is the review of Gordon Woodhull. I myself wrote a new front-end for MSM using Metaparse, and other use cases were very welcome and Gordon managed to produce one for his compile-time graph library by the end of the review, which I found impressive (for both the reviewer and the library). Thank you for investing time in this review. Another important factor for me for acceptance is how well the author is going to maintain his library. We have too many abandoned libraries. Abel went out of his way to oblige remarks and demands made by reviewers. Long before the reviews he also had obliged my many critics and demands. He also showed himself open for experiments. All this while keeping a very calm and professional tone. This is for me a very good sign of a library which will be well-maintained. Finally, there were some repeated important comments which I see as adressed to the rest of Boost that the library is targeted towards library writers. From Peter Dimov: > - Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain? "I'm not sure if anybody is. :-)" It all depends on us, library and potential library writers to become knowledgeable about this domain and make this library move from potentially useful to very useful. We need to use it to write more cool libraries. I notice a recurring theme where Boost would be dead or on the way to doom etc etc. Some very popular Boost libraries are now part of the Standard, and so what? We need to make new ones. Metaparse is one of them. Let's build more, using it! Yes Reviews(11): Andrzej Krzemienski Bjorn Reese Gordon Woodhull Lee Clagett Louis Dionne Michael Caisse Paul A. Bristow Peter Dimov Roland Bock Edward Diener Niall Douglas I want to thank all the reviewers who invested their time in this review and those who provided some usefuls comments. I also want to thank Abel for presenting this great library. Christophe Henry Metaparse Review Manager _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost

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Boost.Hana
by Glen Fernandes 06 Jul '15

06 Jul '15

Dear Ron, Louis, and Boost developers, The review period for Hana has concluded. 18 reviews were submitted: - 17 votes for acceptance. (1 of these was conditional upon Hana wholly supporting a second C++ implementation however). - 1 vote for rejection; for lack of compiler support. I submit that Hana be accepted into Boost. I want to congratulate Louis: the Boost community wants Hana to become an official Boost library. Thank you again, Louis, for your work on Hana and for contributing it to Boost. I propose we require, prior to Hana's inclusion in a Boost release, only that: 1. Hana's unit tests to be integrated into Boost's regression tests. If this requires maintaining both CMakeLists.txt and .b2 files, it is still worth it. I am willing to assist with this effort (and the invitation extends to anyone in the community to also contribute to the task). For release managers, potential Hana contributors, or just the general developer community in Boost, to see Hana's test cases in http://boost.org/development/tests/master/developer/summary.html will be useful. I trust, but do not mandate before Hana is officially accepted into Boost, that: 1. All GitHub issues pertaining to implementation and documentation that were opened by Louis in response to review feedback (or by others, such as Vincente, that were approved by Louis) will be addressed eventually (as long as they remain relevant). I personally would ask for, but do not require for Hana's acceptance, that: 1. That Hana's non-reference documentation live outside of the source code. The presentation of Hana's documentation is great; it looks modern, is easy to browse. I am not a fan of the prose living inside hana.hpp though (API reference documentation is the only exception). 2. Louis to investigate further the possibility of a Hana core library if such can be achieved with zero overhead (instead of focusing that effort onto a separate library that provides only a subset of Hana's functionality). On the note of Hana's current support in existing C++ implementations: - While Hana is wholly only supported by clang at present, gcc is not far behind. Given the trend of language conformance, it is reasonable to expect Hana will be entirely supported in a future gcc release. - Hana targets the C++ standard (i.e. This isn't a case of targeting any compiler-vendor specific extensions) and any highly-contentious C++ language features within (e.g. This isn't something like a pre-C++11 library that uses 'export' that only builds with an EDG compiler). - The community now has expressed sufficient interest in both kinds of libraries being part of Boost: Highly portable libraries that target implementation-specific features, and maintain compatibility with even legacy compilers; standard conforming, modern, libraries that are free of the maintenance debt of ancient compiler support. - We need more libraries taking advantage of C++14 language features to drive vendor conformance. A standard may only be as potent as the C++ implementations that support support it, but when one (such as clang does) does, others will be more driven to follow suit when real (and highly desired) projects take advantage of it. My thanks to everyone that participated in Hana's review with a review (Edouard, John Fletcher, John Bytheway, Niall, Krzysztof, Manuel, Roland, Christophe, David Stone, David Sankel, Lorenzo, John, Paul, Zach, Kohei, Charley, Vincente, Abel) as well as discussion and bug reports. Best, Glen

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[boost] Boost.DLL formal review is ongoing
by Vladimir Prus 03 Jul '15

03 Jul '15

The formal review of Boost.DLL library by Antony Polukhin is nearing the end of the first week. As of today, over 100 people read through the library's tutorial, suggesting quite some interest. However, no reviews were submitted yet. Please take the time to post your thoughts - even if you don't have time to do a full review, or try the library, comments on design and interfaces are still very valuable. The summary of the library features and review checklists are reproduced below. Boost.DLL is a C++98 library for comfortable work with DLL and DSO. Library provides a portable across platforms way to: - load libraries at runtime - import and export any native functions and variables - make alias names for C++ mangled functions and symbols - query libraries/objects and executables for sections and exported symbols - self loading and self querying - getting program and module location by exported symbol The documentation can be found at: http://apolukhin.github.io/Boost.DLL/index.html and the source can be obtained at: https://github.com/apolukhin/Boost.DLL Please post your reviews on the mailing list and if possible, answer the following questions: - Should the library be accepted? - How useful is it? - What's your evaluation of - Design - Implementation - Documentations - Tests - How much effort did you put into your evaluation? - Did you attempt to use the library? On what systems and compilers? Thanks, Volodya _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost

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