August 2005 - Boost - lists.boost.org

Fall Review Schedule - version 1.0
by Tom Brinkman 19 Aug '05

19 Aug '05

Boost Fall Review Schedule - version 1.0 Contact Tom Brinkman at reportbase(a)gmail.com to request a review, to make updates to this document or to volunteer to be a review manager. Review Queue as of August 14, 2005. Not in any particular: 1. xpressive - Eric Niebler 2. logging - John Torjo 3. singleton - Jason Hise (new review needed) 4. function types - Tobias Schwinger (mini post-review needed) 5. output formatters - Reece Dunn (new review needed) 6. policy pointer - David B. Held 7. fixed strings - Reece Dunn 8. intrusive - Olaf Krzikalla 9. interfaces - Jonathan Turkanis Other Libraries: 10. factory - Federico Stella f.stella(a)flashnet.it 11. TR1 1. xpressive - Author: Eric Niebler eric(a)boost-consulting.com> Review Manager: needed Download: http://boost-sandbox.sf.net/vault/index.php?directory=eric_niebler Docs: http://boost-sandbox.sf.net/libs/xpressive Review Date: to be confirmed xpressive is a TR1 regex work-alike that also accepts regexes as expression templates and lets regexes nest and call each other recursively. Significant changes since 0.9.3 - c_regex_traits to wrap the global C locale - null_regex_traits for searching non-char data - doc and test improvements - bugs in static regexes and Unicode support squashed You can consider this the xpressive 1.0 release candidate. All that remains is to add more tests and documentation, and perhaps a tweak to the traits interface. 2. logging Author - John Torjo john(a)torjo.com Review Manager - Hartmut.Kaiser Hartmut.Kaiser(a)gmail.com Download: http://torjo.com/code/logging.zip Docs: http://torjo.com/ The Boost Log Library is a small library, who: * makes it very easy to declare/define new logs * allows you very simple access to logs * allows for log hierarchies, and for modifying log hierarchies * allows for easy and efficient enabling/disabling of logs/log hierarchies * allows for easy manipulation of log behaviors (the log's destination(s) and/or adjusting the original message) * is thread-safe Using the library in code is easy and straightforward: int i = 1, j = 2, k = 3; BOOST_LOG(app) << "testing " << i << '-' << j << '-' << k << std::endl; BOOST_LOG(dbg) << "this is a debug message, i=" << i << std::endl; BOOST_LOG(info) << "I just wanted to tell you something...."; Recent Additions: - can be compiled as a static/dynamic runtime (works as a DLL as well) - removed dependency on boost_thread Note: I did not test this on Unix, but it should work. If anybody can take a look at detail/ts_posix.hpp, I'd appreciate it. - solved other small issues, based on feedback - slightly improved documentation 3) Singleton Author - Jason Hise chaos(a)ezequal.com Review Manager - Needed Download: http://tinyurl.com/6qvrd (old version from previous review) Docs: http://tinyurl.com/6qvrd The singleton library provides multiple powerful methods of controlling the lifetimes of global resources. Client code can choose among the many provided methods of creation, or can easily write new creators for specialized initialization needs. Client code can additionally control precisely when a singleton instance is automatically created and destroyed, can create and destroy singleton instances explicitly any number of times, and can set up dependencies between singletons in an easy and natural way. 4) Function Types Author - Tobias Schwinger tschwinger(a)neoscientists.org Review Manager - John Maddock john(a)johnmaddock.co.uk Download: http://tinyurl.com/4oe7q (old version - from previous review) Docs: http://tinyurl.com/4oe7q This library provides a metaprogramming facility to classify, decompose and synthesize function-, function pointer-, function reference- and member function pointer types. For the purpose of this documentation, these types are collectively referred to as function types (this differs from the standard definition and redefines the term from a programmer's perspective to refer to the most common types that involve functions). The classes introduced by this library shall conform to the concepts of the Boost Metaprogramming library (MPL). The Function Types library enables the user to: * test an arbitrary type for being a function type of specified kind, * inspect properties of function types, * view and modify sub types of an encapsulated function type with MPL Sequence operations, and * synthesize function types. This library supports variadic functions and can be configured to support non-default calling conventions. This library was reviewed June 2005 and was accepted pending a mini post-review. 5. Output formatters Author - Reece Dunn msclrhd(a)hotmail.com Review Manager - Needed Download: Docs: This library was reviewed september 11, 2005. It requires a second full review. 6. Policy Pointer Author - David B. Held dheld(a)codelogicconsulting.com Review Manager - Gennadiy gennadiy.rozental(a)thomson.com Download: Boost Sandbox under policy_ptr Docs: Boost Sandbox under policy_ptr Smart pointers are used to automate memory management by handling the deletion of dynamically allcoated objects (and other resources). They assist in ensuring program correctness, exception safety, and memory integrity. Policy Pointer is a policy-based smart pointer framework designed to accomodate the large number of smart pointer designs. Through the use of policy classes, virtually any smart pointer type can be constructed within this framework. This library is a Boostification of the original Loki::SmartPtr type with significant modifications. 7. Fixed Strings Author - Reece Dunn msclrhd(a)hotmail.com Review Manager - Beman Dawes bdawes(a)acm.org Download: boosts-sandbox/boost/fixed_string Docs: boosts-sandbox/boost/fixed_string The fixed string library provides buffer overrun protection for static sized strings (char s[ n ]). It provides a C-style string interface for compatibility with C code (for example, porting a C program to C++). There is also a std::string-style interface using a class based on flex_string by Andre Alexandrescu with a few limitations due to the non-resizable nature of the class. 8. Intrusive Author - Olaf Krzikalla krzikalla(a)gmx.de Review Manager - needed Download: http://people.freenet.de/turtle++/intrusive.zip Docs: http://people.freenet.de/turtle++/intrusive.zip While intrusive containers were and are widely used in C, they became more and more forgotten in the C++-world due to the presence of the standard containers, which don't support intrusive techniques. Boost.Intrusive not only reintroduces this technique to C++, but also encapsulates the implementation in STL-like interfaces. Hence anyone familiar with standard containers can use intrusive containers with ease. 9. Interfaces Author - Jonathan Turkanis technews(a)kangaroologic.com Review Manager - needed Download: http://www.kangaroologic.com/interfaces Docs: http://www.kangaroologic.com/interfaces "Boost.Interfaces provides a macro-based Interface Definition Language (IDL) which can be used to define C++ class types called interfaces. An interface is a lightweight value type associated with a set of named function signatures. An interface instance can be bound at runtime to any object which implements the interface, i.e., to any object of a type with accessible non-static member functions having the same name and signature as the set of functions associated with the interface. The functions of the bound object can then be invoked through the interface instance using the 'dot' operator. Binding is completely non-intrusive: the object's type need not declare any virtual functions or derive from any particluar base class. "Current applications of Boost.Interfaces include: * Non-intrusive dynamic polymorphism — interfaces can often be used in place of abstract base classes, and are sometimes much faster (see Performance). * Dynamic inheritance — allows function calls to be forwarded automatically to an object specified at runtime (see Delegation). * Smart Interface Pointers — smart pointers which can manage the lifetime of any object whose type implements a given interface. * Smart References — like smart interface pointers, but the managed object is accessed using the "dot" operator."

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(Vector) norm functions?
by Daryle Walker 19 Aug '05

19 Aug '05

Should we add functions to evaluate the various norms of a (numeric) sequence? //======================================================================= template < typename Number, typename InputIterator > Number norm_1( InputIterator b, InputIterator e ) { using std::abs; return std::accumulate( b, e, Number(), abs(_1) + abs(_2) ); } template < typename Number, typename InputIterator > Number norm_2( InputIterator b, InputIterator e ) { using std::sqrt; return sqrt( std::inner_product( b, e, b, Number() ) ); } template < typename Number, typename InputIterator > Number norm_infinity( InputIterator b, InputIterator e ) { using std::abs; return abs( *std::max_element( b, e, abs(_1) < abs(_2) ) ); } template < typename Number, typename InputIterator > Number norm_x( int n, InputIterator b, InputIterator e ) { switch ( n ) { default: { using std::pow; using std::abs; Number r = Number(); for ( ; b != e ; ++b ) { r += pow( abs(*b), n ); } return root( r, n ); } case 2: return norm_2<Number>( b, e ); case 1: return norm_1<Number>( b, e ); case 0: // You can't really have a zero-norm // And you can't pass in infinity as a parameter // So we have 0 -> infinity return norm_infinity<Number>( b, e ); } } //======================================================================= I just wrote that here, so I don't know if it can work. I don't know if I used the bind/lambda stuff correctly, and there's still the problem that the "root" function doesn't exist. -- Daryle Walker Mac, Internet, and Video Game Junkie darylew AT hotmail DOT com

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Re: [boost] serialization queston
by Robert Ramey 19 Aug '05

19 Aug '05

Upon (re) reading this, I'm not really sure what is being suggested here. That's why I didn't respond to the original post. I think my view that there is no problem probably reflects my lack of understanding of the original question. Anyway - here it is. Robert Ramey >Why not make include polymorphic_archive automatic? And make other >archive types resort to polymorphic_archive when no serialization for >that archive type was BOOST_CLASS_EXPORTED. As you say, the only cost >is a "teensy bit of execution time", in most cases users won't even >notice, but the code size will be reduced. I am generally not in favor of adding code not requested by the library user and not required. I much prefer that the library reflect what the user has said he wants. So my view is there are a couple of options. a) if one want's to use a polymorphic archive, include that in a (possibly precompiled) module. b) if one want's to use the template archive implementations, specify the ones you want. c) if this generates too much code bloat, make a library which includes any or all of the above. Its fairly easy to do this. Then link against your library of serialization implementations. Only ones actually used will be included in your program. So this would automatically give you access to ALL archive implementations without including dead code in your applications. The C++ module to build the library would look something like: #include <boost/archive/text_iarchive.hpp> #include <boost/archive/text_iarchive.hpp> #include <boost/archive/xml_iarchive.hpp> ... #include <boost/archive/polymorphic_iarchive.hpp> #include <boost/archive/polymorphic_oarchive.hpp> #include A.hpp #include B.hpp ... // if class modules above don't include export then BOOST_CLASS_EXPORT(A) BOOST_CLASS_EXPORT(B) Robert Ramey

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Re: [boost] It's a digraph. (was: Re: Interest in an ODBC library?)
by Jonathan Wakely 19 Aug '05

19 Aug '05

Daryle Walker wrote: > On 8/18/05 4:57 AM, "Jonathan Wakely" <cow(a)compsoc.man.ac.uk> wrote: > > > postgresql/connect.cpp accidentally uses the <:: trigraph in the > > typedefs at the top of the file. You need a space before the template > > args to avoid that. > > I think you mean the "<:" digraph. It represents the "[" (opening square > bracket) character. The official term is "alternative token" (see section > 2.5 of the standard), because some of the tokens have more than two > characters. (These include the bitwise and Boolean word operators, i.e. > "and".) They're considered after the preprocessor (phase 3 of section 2.1), > and trigraphs are done earlier than that (in phase 1). Yep, you're absolutely right -- thanks. I didn't pay a lot of attention to the exact compiler diagnostic, just added a space and got on with it. jon

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[Boost-bugs] [ boost-Support Requests-1263909 ] missing boost_thread-vc71-mt1_32.dll
by SourceForge.net 19 Aug '05

19 Aug '05

Support Requests item #1263909, was opened at 2005-08-19 05:38 Message generated for change (Tracker Item Submitted) made by Item Submitter You can respond by visiting: https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=207586&aid=1263909&group_… Please note that this message will contain a full copy of the comment thread, including the initial issue submission, for this request, not just the latest update. Category: None Group: None Status: Open Resolution: None Priority: 5 Submitted By: Nobody/Anonymous (nobody) Assigned to: Nobody/Anonymous (nobody) Summary: missing boost_thread-vc71-mt1_32.dll Initial Comment: I installed a USB driver and now I am getting this message every time I start up my computer, either from reboot or from sleep: Title: scdclient.tmp.exe unable to locate component Message essence: boost_thread-vc71-mt1_32.dll is missing; need to reinstall application I searched the list of products that use this dll and I don't have any of those installed.I am running on Microsoft XP Pro, and have various applications such as Macromedia studio, Oracle 9i, Visio 2000, Microsoft Office XP, and others installed. And ideas what I should reinstall? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can respond by visiting: https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=207586&aid=1263909&group_… ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is Sponsored by the Better Software Conference & EXPO September 19-22, 2005 * San Francisco, CA * Development Lifecycle Practices Agile & Plan-Driven Development * Managing Projects & Teams * Testing & QA Security * Process Improvement & Measurement * http://www.sqe.com/bsce5sf _______________________________________________ Boost-bugs mailing list Boost-bugs(a)lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/boost-bugs

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memory management
by Bojan �ffff8aernek 19 Aug '05

19 Aug '05

hello! I'm looking for a smart pointer that would support cycles and reference counting. Any boost lib / experimental lib that springs to mind? Thanks, Bojan. __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour: http://tour.mail.yahoo.com/mailtour.html

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[serialization] Performance issues serializing lots of objects
by Adrien Gervaise 19 Aug '05

19 Aug '05

Hi ! We've been successfully using the boost serialization library on various industrial projects. One one occasion though, we had to make a modification in the source code in order to improve the performance of the process : The library uses a set (in basic_oarchive.cpp) to keep track of the serialized objects. In our project, a very high number of relatively small objects are serialized through pointers and references to each other, and the number of elements in the set could rocket to several millions. This led to memory fragmentation and very high performance hits after the first serialization (on a Windows XP platform at least). We just added a boost::fast_pool_allocator on the set of serialized pointers. The set is cleared in the destructor of the archive, after which release_memory() is called on the pool. This simple patch could reduce the time to perform a whole save from several minutes to a few seconds. Best regards, -- Adrien Gervaise MasaGroup SCI

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Re: [boost] asio networking proposal
by Martin Bonner 19 Aug '05

19 Aug '05

----Original Message---- From: Thorsten Ottosen [mailto:nesotto@cs.aau.dk] Sent: 19 August 2005 00:10 To: boost(a)lists.boost.org Subject: Re: [boost] asio networking proposal > > If the only performance sensible iterator types are T*, > I would't mind simply > > template< unsigned N > > void receive( char (&)[N] ); > > template< unsigned N > > void receive( char (&)[N], unsigned size ); > > void recieve( vector<char>& ); > > void recieve( vector<char>&, unsigned size ); > > or something. > > I have a hard time imagining any overhead imposed by > vector<char> compared to a heap-allocated char*. > I'm commenting from the sidelines here, and I'm in the camp that instinctively recoils from a (void*,size_t) interface. However, if we can persuade Christopher to add a slightly higher level interface, can I put in a plea for it to be in terms of "unsigned char", rather than plain char? I don't know about others, but I have a convention that "char" means "textual data", and "unsigned char" is reserved for "raw memory". (Unsigned char also makes it easier to grab bit-fields by shifting - the behaviour is more completely defined). Also: > void receive( char (&)[N], unsigned size ); > void recieve( vector<char>& ); ^^ I was going to post that there is an argument in favour of recv as opposed to receive, and Thorsten has just provided a nice example of it! -- Martin Bonner Martin.Bonner(a)Pitechnology.com Pi Technology, Milton Hall, Ely Road, Milton, Cambridge, CB4 6WZ, ENGLAND Tel: +44 (0)1223 441434

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Re: [boost] Any (La)TeX experts here?
by Christoph Ludwig 19 Aug '05

19 Aug '05

On Mon, Aug 15, 2005 at 04:03:30PM -0400, Daryle Walker wrote: > (Some of the) Problems I see: There's a diff at <url:http://www.cdc.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/~cludwig/boost/HyperComplex.diff> that fixes or works around the problems below. > 1. I had to bump the author's e-mail and web addresses to a footnote > instead of putting them in the main title-page text. (lines 5-7 in the > *.tex file) I am not so sure I understood what you want. Setting the two URLs centerd below the author's name is certainly no problem. (I decided to set them somewhat smaller than the author's name. If you don't like that remove the \small in front of the URLs.) I set the URLs with... the \url command. :-) That way you don't need to worry about special characters etc. > 2. There's no space between a \set? macro and the next word, outside of > math formulas. (lots of places) That's cured by adding \xspace in the appropriate command definitions. > 3. The element multiplication table isn't centered, nor does it have any > space above & below it separating it from the main text. (lines 213-224) You want the table to be "displayed". Therefore I put the table inside a display environment. (align* fom the amsmath package, but other environments would have worked as well.) And in math mode you need to use the array environment rather than tabular. > 4. The 16-element tuples aren't line-broken, so they could overflow the > column. (lines 244-248, 631-633) Here I applied a dirty hack: I defined a command that inserts a comma followed by a (non mandatory) \linebreak. It is possible to define a command \tuple that allows linebreaks after commas even within parentheses, similar to the \url command. But I am not familiar enough with the required low level TeX to come up with a quick solution. > 5. Some function blocks are inline with the text instead of put into a > separate row by themselves. (lines 273-275, 451-456, 661-663) That's essentially the same as (3). I'd prefer to keep function definitions on one line, but that's up to you. I also don't like the itemized formulas (pp. 16, 17). I'd rather employ the display and alignment environments from amsmath. But I did not want to change too much. > 6. Many equations involving large matrices overflow the column. (lines > 290-298, 321-328, 567-589, 591-613, 1442-1461) Here I did not find any better solution than to typeset the matrices in \scriptstyle. In some cases it might be better to pull the nontrivial terms out of the matrix, i.e. \begin{align*} M &= \begin{bmatrix} A & B & C \\ D & E & F \\ G & H & J \end{bmatrix} \intertext{where} A &= \alpha^2 + \beta^2 - \gamma^2 - \delta^2\\ B &= -2\alpha\delta + 2\beta\gamma\\ % and so on \end{align*} Then the matrix can probably be set in its natural size. I made some more minor modifications: I replaced the standard math blackboard bold font with the doublestroke font I like much better for the set symbols. I changed the hyperref options such that hyperlinks are no longer in frame boxes with colored frames but in colored font. The frames interferred with the surrounding text and made it harder to read. And, finally, I added \texorpdfstring to the title of section 2.4 to suppress the annoying warnings "Token not allowed in a PDFDocEncoded string". The document still offers many opportunities to improve its typesetting but I think I covered the most glaring points. HTH Christoph -- http://www.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/TI/Mitarbeiter/cludwig.html LiDIA: http://www.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/TI/LiDIA/Welcome.html

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Shared library failure under gcc
by Mat Marcus 18 Aug '05

18 Aug '05

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 It appears that on some platforms, the boost build system is not aware of the necessary compiler flags that must be set when using shared libraries. In my experience, under gcc 4.0 if one doesn't effectively make *all* symbols visible via -fvisibility=default, for both the dynamic libraries and the executable that uses them, then compiler generated RTTI information will *not* be shared. I believe that - -fvisibility=default for dynamic libraries is the default setting but when an executable is being built it seems that -fvisibility=hidden is the default. <complaint> The fact that in order to safely use C++ with dynamic libraries on this platform one must effectively make all symbols visible is an unpleasant state of affairs with a number of ramifications. But this is a topic for another list. </complaint> We are fortunate that in one of the boost::signals test executables, this leads to a repeatable crash (boost_any_bridge fails to detect that two types are the same (because of an erroneous type info comparison). It is much worse in some other situations. I have seen silent failures (such as the "type" of a standard exception being changed between where it is thrown and where it is caught). I have tested this crash and fix (by manually recompiling the executable with all symbols visible) on the darwin gcc 4.0 platform using boost build v2. I just noticed the boost bug report #1262038 <http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=107586&aid=1262038&group_i…> with the exact same stack crawl, so I believe it is a more general phenomenon. Can anyone suggest patches to the build system to support the safe use of shared libs with gcc 4.0? Thanks, Mat -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP Desktop 9.0.2 (Build 2424) iQA/AwUBQwTRixIZBaoznf65EQI3aACfXHYAI5bLL1buAaNqpjsQcGkgJI8AoLQx O5LGuDL1ujZdPIx5AvOvdO3B =HhtX -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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