May 2009 - Boost - lists.boost.org

[Modularization] A new approach to header modularization
by Beman Dawes 03 Jun '09

03 Jun '09

I've started to put together a wiki page based on our ongoing Header Modularization discussions. See http://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/wiki/HeaderModularization I listed eight approaches to meeting the Goals/Objectives/Needs/Wants, and was about to identify the weaknesses of each approach when I hit on approach nine: Move (permanently) each library's root/libs/libname contents into root/boost/libname for the library. In other words, instead of moving the boost/... tree headers to the libs/... tree, merge the libs/... tree into the boost/... tree. For example, Boost.Filesystem is currently organized like this: root/ boost/ filesystem.hpp filesystem/ config.hpp convenience.hpp exception.hpp fstream.hpp operations.hpp path.hpp libs/ filesystem/ build/ ... CMakeLists.txt doc/ ... example/ ... index.html ... module.cmake src/ ... test/ ... After the reorganization, filesystem would be organized like this: root/ boost/ filesystem.hpp filesystem/ config.hpp convenience.hpp exception.hpp fstream.hpp operations.hpp path.hpp build/ ... CMakeLists.txt doc/ ... example/ ... index.html ... module.cmake src/ ... test/ ... In theory, the root/libs/... tree isn't needed anymore. In practice we might want to keep a root/libs/libname/index.html entry for each library so docs links don't break. Apologies if someone already suggested this approach. It is so simple I can't believe someone didn't already suggest it. Unless I'm missing something, this is the only approach that appears to do fairly well for all of the Goals/Objectives/Needs/Wants, and very well for most of them. It would require some rework of scripts and other setups that depend on the current organization of libs/..., but that seems minor compared to the long-term benefits. Comments? --Beman

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Attachments from old bug tracker
by Jeremiah Willcock 03 Jun '09

03 Jun '09

It appears that somebody attached patches to the equivalent of bug 900 (https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/900) in the old bug tracker, and these patches were not moved over to the new tracker. Is it possible to get these attachments? -- Jeremiah Willcock

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Bug Sprint Report for Friday, May 29th
by Marshall Clow 03 Jun '09

03 Jun '09

The boost bug sprint started Friday, May 29th, and runs through Sunday June 7th. We're off to a great start! Status <https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/report/1> 7:00 AM PDT 5/29: 797 open tickets. 7:45 AM PDT 5/30: 772 open tickets. Activity: 5/29: 6 new tickets, 77 modifications, 25 tickets closed [ Numbers may not add up because I am counting via two different methods, using data that is time-stamped in two different time zones ] What can you do? See <https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/wiki/BugSprintJune2009> for details. I've added three new reports to the trac: Open ticket count by owner: <https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/report/18> Open ticket count by component: <https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/report/19> Open ticket count by ticket type: <https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/report/20> Open ticket count by milestone: <https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/report/21> The following bugs appear to have been fixed, but the tickets were never closed. I would appreciate it if the library maintainers could verify this and close the tickets. https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/145 Iterator https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/287 date_time The following tickets are feature requests that are unlikely ever to be implemented. Should they be closed? https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/558 database https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/100 concept_check https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/182 concept_check --------- Sign-up sheet -------- The following people have committed to participate in the bug sprint. Please add you name here, along with what you can do. 1) Marshall Clow (coordination, Mac OS X characterization) 2) Beman Dawes (filesystem, system, timer) 3) Doug Gregor (function, graph, logic, mpi, numeric, property_map, signals) 4) "joel falcou" <joel.falcou(a)u-psud.fr> ( linux gcc testing/VC 2008 testing, patching) 5) Michael Caisse <boost(a)objectmodelingdesigns.com> (bug fixing) 6) Jeremiah Willcock <jewillco(a)osl.iu.edu> (will test and commit graph patches) 7) David Abrahams (iterator, python) 8) Sohail Somani (patches for g++ 4.2.4) 9) Steven Watanabe <watanabesj(a)gmail.com> (bug fixes, como) 10) vicente.botet" <vicente.botet(a)wanadoo.fr> 11) Stjepan Rajko <stjepan.rajko(a)gmail.com> (fusion) 12) Daniel Wallin (parameter, ...) -- -- Marshall Marshall Clow Idio Software <mailto:marshall@idio.com> It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.

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[#1497] Ruling needed on tracker usage
by Beman Dawes 03 Jun '09

03 Jun '09

Dave is pressing to do something about this ticket: > Yes, please! Beman, please read the head of that thread: > http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel/167139 > > IMO this is '''exceedingly''' important, and the only reason I'm not doing > it myself is that it seems to be the domain of the release managers. It > will be an especially huge missed opportunity if we don't get this > straightened out before the bug sprint. Oops! That starts today! We'd > better get moving. > > Again, if there's any way I can help, including writing the policy, please > let me know. By the way, I'm not attached to eliminating "to be > determined," if that helps in any way to resolve this. The concern of the thread mentioned was about milestones for 1.35.0. The same concern applies today, although the milestone numbers have changed. > [the milestone list] > shows all the tickets that have been assigned to the 1.35.0 milestone. > Does this list have any meaning? It doesn't for me, and hasn't since we went to a schedule-driven release system a year and a half ago. > In other words, are we actually > intending to address all of these problems for 1.35, and put off other > tickets for 1.35.1 or 1.36.0? > > IMO getting this list sorted out and handling the tickets one-by-one > is the most productive way to get us from here to a successful release > of 1.35.0. That may mean a number of new tickets need to be added > (probably at least one for each major failure we're seeing in > http://engineering.meta-comm.com/boost-regression/1_34_1/developer/issues.h… > and possibly others) and it will require part of the release team to > triage the whole list of tickets assigned to 1.35.0 and make some > decisions to put certain tickets off for later. In an organization with paid developers and paid managers, it might be possible to look at the tickets, look at the people and other resources available, assign milestone priorities accordingly, and then use progress on clearing them as a metric to guide release activities. But I'm at a loss for how we could use such milestones for Boost. So any ideas would be appreciated if folks think the milestones do have a place in Boost's process of getting releases out. --Beman

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[Bug Sprint] [fusion] tickets needing maintainer / OP attention
by Stjepan Rajko 02 Jun '09

02 Jun '09

The following fusion tickets are ready for maintainer action or feedback from the OP: #1404 - Unordered Fusion Map constructors * could use feedback from the OP (Dean Michael Berris) #1529 - Missing include statement * patch ready #1601 - distane of boost::tuple * patch ready, see comments #1614 - vector workaround needed for MSVC9 * could use feedback / test case from OP (François Barel) Stjepan

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float_mem_cast
by Steven Ross 01 Jun '09

01 Jun '09

There is one function necessary for users to be able to cast their own float types. Should it be in spreadsort.hpp or some separate header file? It seems silly to have a separate header file for it, but I guess it might be used on its own. //Casts a float to the specified integer type template<class Data_type, class Cast_type> inline Cast_type float_mem_cast(const Data_type & data) { //Only cast IEEE floating-point numbers, and only to a same-sized integer BOOST_STATIC_ASSERT(sizeof(Cast_type) == sizeof(Data_type)); BOOST_STATIC_ASSERT(std::numeric_limits<Data_type>::is_iec559); BOOST_STATIC_ASSERT(std::numeric_limits<Cast_type>::is_integer); Cast_type result; std::memcpy(&result, &data, sizeof(Cast_type)); return result; }

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Second call: The Boost Bug Sprint is coming!!
by Marshall Clow 01 Jun '09

01 Jun '09

The boost bug sprint is coming! It starts _this_ Friday, May 28th, and runs through Sunday June 7th. The goal is to address a large number of open bugs/patches/feature requests in the Trac system at <http://svn.boost.org/trac/report/1>. There are currently 791 open tickets; we'd like to knock that number down _a lot_. What can you do? 1) You can fix bugs. * If you are a library maintainer, you can commit your fixes. ;-) * If you are not a library maintainer, you can fix a problem on your local machine (and test it!!), and then attach your fix as a patch to the Trac ticket for the library maintainer to commit. If you do this, please provide a test case that exercises the problem; i.e, one that fails w/o your patch, and succeeds afterwards. 2) You can characterize bugs. * You can attempt to replicate the bug on your system(s), and attach information that you discover to the Trac ticket. This will make it easier for other people to solve the problem, even if you cannot. * You can write test cases demonstrating the problem, and attach them to the Trac ticket. * You can determine if the bug still exists; sometimes they get fixed, and the ticket never gets closed. In this case, try to identify a checkin that addresses the bug; it's always suspicious when bugs go away "by accident." 3) You can test patches. * Some of the tickets in the Trac system contain patches - some are quite old. You can install these patches on your system, and determine if they (a) build, and (b) work. * You can write test cases for the patches, and attach them to the ticket. 4) You can help implement new features. * There are a whole set of "feature requests" in the Trac system. If you have an idea about one of these, you can add comments to the Trac system. You can attempt to implement these new features, and attach the patch to the ticket. (Don't forget the test cases!!). Every day during the bug sprint, I'll post the # of tickets modified/closed/opened on the previous day, as well as the total number of open tickets. --------- Sign-up sheet -------- The following people have committed to participate in the bug sprint. Please add you name here, along with what you can do. 1) Marshall Clow (coordination, Mac OS X characterization) 2) Beman Dawes (filesystem, system, timer) 3) Doug Gregor (function, graph, logic, mpi, numeric, property_map, signals) 4) "joel falcou" <joel.falcou(a)u-psud.fr> ( linux gcc testing/VC 2008 testing, patching) 5) Michael Caisse <boost(a)objectmodelingdesigns.com> (bug fixing) 6) Jeremiah Willcock <jewillco(a)osl.iu.edu> (will test and commit graph patches) 7) David Abrahams (iterator, python) 8) Sohail Somani (patches for g++ 4.2.4) -- -- Marshall Marshall Clow Idio Software <mailto:marshall@idio.com> It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.

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Boost.Process article: Tutorial and request for comments
by Boris Schaeling 01 Jun '09

01 Jun '09

I've written an article about Boost.Process: http://www.highscore.de/cpp/process/ I've also fixed a few bugs in Boost.Process (which is now 0.31): http://www.highscore.de/boost/process.zip And the latest source code can also be found in the sandbox: https://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/sandbox/process/ For developers not familar with Boost.Process the article is a tutorial to get more easily started. For developers familiar with Boost.Process it is a request for comments. I've been looking at the big picture finally trying to find out where and how Boost.Process should be changed and in which direction it should move to become a complete library one day. As not everyone will read the entire article here are my thoughts: 1) Boost.Process is based on a few concepts like 'process' and 'context'. While those make sense there are other concepts where I wonder if they should be dropped: * 'executable' is the executable name which in practice must be a std::string. I think the original idea was to support numerous string types. This leads to the question how to support different Unicode encodings which I think is still unanswered in the Boost community. Other libraries, eg. Boost.Interprocess, simply stick to one string type (typically std::string). * 'handle' is the underlying native file handle of a stream (file descriptor on POSIX systems, handle on Windows). The concept is based on a class in the detail namespace of Boost.Process. There is just one class and it's not meant to be used by users of the library either. Thus I'm not sure what's the benefit of having an explicit 'handle' concept at all. 2) Environment variables must be sorted on Windows but not on POSIX systems. On Windows the type environment could be a typedef for std::map and on POSIX systems for std::unordered_map. Currently it's always a typedef for std::map. Is that ok? Should it be changed? Should a macro be provided in case developers want to use different typedefs? 3) Currently Boost.Process is really only useful for creating child processes. It's not possible for example to detect and iterate over other processes on a system. I guess Boost.Process should be enhanced here. Then one day the well-known utility 'ps' on POSIX systems could be implemented in Boost C++. Any comments? 4) When a process is created the standard streams (stdin, stdout and stderr) are closed by default. Is this a good choice? If it isn't what should happen otherwise? Inherting standard streams (which is the default behavior with fork on POSIX systems)? 5) Boost.Process requires to specify an absolute path to an executable which should be started. There is a helper function which returns the absolute path for an executable name (it uses the environment variable PATH). The question is if this should be done automatically if no absolute path is given? 6) When a stream of a child process is captured Boost.Process automatically creates a pipe. As pipes don't support asynchronous operations on Windows a named pipe is required (called FIFO on POSIX systems). Currently a macro must be defined to make Boost.Process use a named pipe on Windows. It might make more sense to enable developers to choose either a pipe or a FIFO explicitly - not only on Windows but on all platforms. Any comments? 7) It's possible to capture and access streams of a child process. Those streams are derived from std::istream and std::ostream and thus only support blocking I/O operations. Currently the underlying handle has to be fetched to initialize a generic I/O object from Boost.Asio to use asynchronous I/O operations. How should the library be changed to make it easier to use asynchronous I/O? 8) There is a method wait() which makes it possible to wait for another process to exit. Currently wait() is provided by the class child though. Shouldn't it really be defined by the class process (so you can wait not only for child processes to exit)? 9) As wait() blocks an asynchronous alternative should be provided. 10) The Windows-specific classes all start with win32_ (eg. win32_child). Wouldn't it make more sense to use windows_ instead (like windows_child) or a windows namespace? First other libraries use windows_ (see Boost.Interprocess). Second there should be no reason why a class like win32_child can't be used on a 64-bit Windows. Boris

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Interest check: container with preallocated buffer
by Dmitry Vinogradov 01 Jun '09

01 Jun '09

Boost.Array offers constant size container with preallocated buffer, Boost.Optional provides from zero to one element. There are no STL container with preallocated buffer and it seems custom allocator does not help to do this with existing containers. Does any container exist to offer functionality like Boost.Array but allowing to store from 0 to N elements? Is there any interest in such container? PS. It's similar to fixed_string but as a generic container. -- Dmitry

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[Bug Sprint] Ticket #315 (new Feature Requests) - Implement operator[] for Tokenizer
by Joel Falcou 01 Jun '09

01 Jun '09

https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/315 Is there any objection in term of concept to give tokenizer this kin dof random access operator ? If no one is against that, I'll attach patch and test. -- ___________________________________________ Joel Falcou - Assistant Professor PARALL Team - LRI - Universite Paris Sud XI Tel : (+33)1 69 15 66 35

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