January 2010 - Boost - lists.boost.org

Boost library submission (poll for interest)
by Bob Walters 15 Jan '10

15 Jan '10

I have a library I would like to submit for inclusion in Boost. This message is just soliciting for interest per the submission process. If interest is expressed, I'll carry on with a preliminary submission. The library is an embedded database, to the tune of products like the embedded version of InnoDB, BerkeleyDB, etc. In this case, the database is structured as a Boost.interprocess shared region (typically mmap so it can page) which contains one or more STL-like containers holding application defined data types in directly usable form (i.e. not serialized.) The database infrastructure is fully ACID compliant, with durability via write-ahead logging, and periodic checkpoints. More details, examples, and documentation is available at http://stldb.sourceforge.net/ for more details on this libraries capabilities. Currently, I've only implemented map<> (probably the most useful container type in a database), but the plan is to continue to add containers as requested/needed until ACID compliant versions of a decent portion of the STL are available. There are some concepts which I've been trying to flesh out with this, including a standard concept for a transaction-aware type which in turn exposes operations which can be logged, undone, recovered, etc. Allowing that concept to be used recursively (containers of other containers, or of application-defined transaction-aware objects) is one of the longer-term goals of this library. Let me know if there's any interest, and I'll work on a preliminary submission for the sandbox. Thanks, Bob Walters

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[uuid][release] - release summary for FreeBSD failures
by Andy Tompkins 15 Jan '10

15 Jan '10

Hi, A number of my tests fail for FreeBSD, see http://tinyurl.com/yjfhbg7 A specific one is here, http://tinyurl.com/ykg7p98 It says: Run fail /libexec/ld-elf.so.1: /usr/lib32/libm.so.5: unsupported file layout I'm not sure how to fix these. My tests pass in the trunk for FreeBSD and the uuid code and test are identical between the release branch and trunk. Can anyone help with this? Regards, Andy Tompkins

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Using boost::circular_buffer in boost::interprocess:managed_shared_memory
by Taewan Kim 14 Jan '10

14 Jan '10

Can boost::circular_buffer be allocated in boost::interprocess:managed_shared_memory by passing an Interprocess aloocator to the constructor of boost::circular_buffer?

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[iostreams]ANNOUNCE:indent_filtering_ostream.zip in vault
by Larry Evans 14 Jan '10

14 Jan '10

The .zip file in subject is here: http://www.boostpro.com/vault/index.php?&directory=Input%20-%20Output It includes a boost/iostreams/filter/indent.hpp and boost/iostreams/utility/indent_filtering_ostream.hpp. The latter uses the former to allow indenting and undenting a stream. Is there any interest in installing this in the iostreams library? -regards, Larry

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Re: [boost] [msm] scalability
by Christophe Henry 14 Jan '10

14 Jan '10

>If we are talking about big changes, then I'd prefer to write a >completely new back-end for which I have a few ideas ;-) It appears that this discussion requires a bit of clarification. What we are discussing here will be taken care of after the inclusion of MSM into Boost. For the time being, I'm interested in collecting great ideas from the clever people on this list so that I have thinking material.

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Review Wizard report for December 2009
by John Phillips 14 Jan '10

14 Jan '10

All, Please check the report below and let Ron and I know if there are any issues so we can correct them before putting it on the web site. Pay especial attention to the need for many qualified and interested Review Managers. John ============================================== Review Wizard Status Report for December 2009 ============================================== News ==== Polygon Library Accepted Boost 1.40 Released New Libraries: None Revised Libraries: Accumulators, Asio, Circular Buffer, Filesystem, Foreach, Function, Fusion, Hash, Interprocess, Intrusive, MPL, Program Options, Proto, Python, Serialization, Unordered, Xpressive Geometry Library Accepted Boost 1.41 Released New Libraries: Property Tree Revised Libraries: DateTime, Filesystem, Iostreams, Math, Multi-index Containers, Proto, Python, Regex, Spirit, System, Thread, Unordered, Utility, Wave, Xpressive MSM Library Review Underway Constrained Value Review - Review Result still Pending Older Issues ============ The Time Series Library, accepted in August 2007, has not yet been submitted to SVN. The Floating Point Utilities Library, has not yet been submitted to SVN. It is slated to be integrated with the Boost.Math library. The Switch Library, accepted provisionally in January 2008, has not yet been submitted for mini-review and full acceptance. The Phoenix Library, accepted provisionally in September 2008, has not yet been submitted for mini-review and full acceptance. For libraries that are still waiting to get into SVN, please get them ready and into the repository. The developers did some great work making the libraries, so don't miss the chance to share that work with others. General Announcements ===================== As always, we need experienced review managers. The review queue has been growing substantially but we have had few volunteers, so manage reviews if possible and if not please make sure to watch the review schedule and participate. Please take a look at the list of libraries in need of managers and check out their descriptions. In general review managers are active boost participants or library contributors. If you can serve as review manager for any of them, email Ron Garcia or John Phillips, "garcia at osl dot iu dot edu" and "phillips at mps dot ohio-state dot edu" respectively. We are also suffering from a lack of reviewers. While we all understand time pressures and the need to complete paying work, the strength of Boost is based on the detailed and informed reviews submitted by you. A recent effort is trying to secure at least five people who promise to submit reviews as a precondition to starting the review period. Consider volunteering for this and even taking the time to create the review as early as possible. No rule says you can only work on a review during the review period. A link to this report will be posted to www.boost.org. If you would like us to make any modifications or additions to this report before we do that, please email Ron or John. If you're a library author and plan on submitting a library for review in the next 3-6 months, send Ron or John a short description of your library and we'll add it to the Libraries Under Construction below. We know that there are many libraries that are near completion, but we have hard time keeping track all of them. Please keep us informed about your progress. The included review queue isn't a classic queue. It is more an unordered list of the libraries awaiting review. As such, any library in the queue can be reviewed once the developer is ready and a review manager works with the wizards and the developer to schedule a review. It is not FIFO. Review Queue ============ * Lexer * Shifted Pointer * Logging * Log * Join * Pimpl * Task * Endian * Conversion * Sorting * GIL.IO * AutoBuffer * String Convert * Move * Containers * Interval Containers * Type Traits Extensions * Interthreads * Bitfield * Lockfree -------------------- Lexer ----- :Author: Ben Hanson :Review Manager: Eric Neibler :Download: `Boost Vault <http://boost-consulting.com/vault/index.php?action=downloadfile&filename=bo…>`__ :Description: A programmable lexical analyser generator inspired by 'flex'. Like flex, it is programmed by the use of regular expressions and outputs a state machine as a number of DFAs utilising equivalence classes for compression. Shifted Pointer --------------- :Author: Phil Bouchard :Review Manager: Needed :Download: `Boost Vault <http://www.boost-consulting.com/vault/index.php?&direction=0&order=&directo…>`__ :Description: Smart pointers are in general optimized for a specific resource (memory usage, CPU cycles, user friendliness, ...) depending on what the user need to make the most of. The purpose of this smart pointer is mainly to allocate the reference counter (or owner) and the object itself at the same time so that dynamic memory management is simplified thus accelerated and cheaper on the memory map. Logging ------- :Author: John Torjo :Review Manager: Gennadiy Rozental :Download: http://torjo.com/log2/ :Description: Used properly, logging is a very powerful tool. Besides aiding debugging/testing, it can also show you how your application is used. The Boost Logging Library allows just for that, supporting a lot of scenarios, ranging from very simple (dumping all to one destination), to very complex (multiple logs, some enabled/some not, levels, etc). It features a very simple and flexible interface, efficient filtering of messages, thread-safety, formatters and destinations, easy manipulation of logs, finding the best logger/filter classes based on your application's needs, you can define your own macros and much more! Log --- :Author: Andrey Semashev :Review Manager: Needed :Download: `Boost Vault <http://tinyurl.com/cm9lum>`__ :Description: The library is aimed to help adding logging features to applications. It provides out-of-box support for many widely used capabilities, such as formatting and filtering based on attributes, sending logs to a syslog server or to Windows Event Log, or simply storing logs into files. It also provides basic support for the library initialization from a settings file. The library can also be used for a wider range of tasks and implement gathering and processing statistical information or notifying user about application events. Join ---- :Author: Yigong Liu :Review Manager: Needed :Download: http://channel.sourceforge.net/ :Description: Join is an asynchronous, message based C++ concurrency library based on join calculus. It is applicable both to multi-threaded applications and to the orchestration of asynchronous, event-based applications. It follows Comega's design and implementation and builds with Boost facilities. It provides a high level concurrency API with asynchronous methods, synchronous methods, and chords which are "join-patterns" defining the synchronization, asynchrony, and concurrency. Pimpl ----- :Author: Vladimir Batov :Review Manager: Needed :Download: | `Boost Vault <http://www.boost-consulting.com/vault/index.php?action=downloadfile&filenam…>`__ | http://www.ddj.com/cpp/205918714 (documentation) :Description: The Pimpl idiom is a simple yet robust technique to minimize coupling via the separation of interface and implementation and then implementation hiding. This library provides a convenient yet flexible and generic deployment technique for the Pimpl idiom. It's seemingly complete and broadly applicable, yet minimal, simple and pleasant to use. Task ----------- :Author: Oliver Kowalke :Review Manager: Needed :Download: `Boost Vault <http://www.boostpro.com/vault/index.php?action=downloadfile&filename=bo…>`__ :Description: Formerly called Thread Pool The library provides: - thread creation policies: determines the management of worker threads: - fixed set of threads in pool - create workerthreads on demand (depending on context) - let worker threads ime out after certain idle time - channel policies: manages access to queued tasks: - bounded channel with high and low watermark for queuing tasks - unbounded channel with unlimited number of queued tasks - rendezvous syncron hand-over between producer and consumer threads - queueing policy: determines how tasks will be removed from channel: - FIFO - LIFO - priority queue (attribute assigned to task) - smart insertions and extractions (for instance remove oldest task with certain attribute by newst one) - tasks can be chained and lazy submit of taks is also supported (thanks to Braddocks future library). - returns a task object from the submit function. The task it self can be interrupted if its is cooperative (means it has some interruption points in its code -> ``this_thread::interruption_point()`` ). Endian ------ :Author: Beman Dawes :Review Manager: Needed :Download: http://mysite.verizon.net/beman/endian-0.10.zip :Description: Conversion ---------- :Author: Vicente Botet :Review Manager: Needed :Download: `Boost Vault <http://www.boostpro.com/vault/index.php?action=downloadfile&filename=co…>`__ :Description: Generic explicit conversion between unrelated types. Boost.Conversion provides: * a generic ``convert_to`` function which can be specialized by the user to make explicit conversion between unrelated types. * a generic ``assign_to`` function which can be specialized by the user to make explicit assignation between unrelated types. * conversion between ``std::complex`` of explicitly convertible types. * conversion between ``std::pair`` of explicitly convertible types. * conversion between ``boost::optional`` of explicitly convertible types. * conversion between ``boost::rational`` of explicitly convertible types. * conversion between ``boost::interval`` of explicitly convertible types. * conversion between ``boost::chrono::time_point`` and ``boost::ptime``. * conversion between ``boost::chrono::duration`` and ``boost::time_duration``. Sorting ------- :Author: Steven Ross :Review Manager: Needed :Download: `Boost Vault <http://www.boostpro.com/vault/index.php?action=downloadfile&filename=al…>`__ :Description: A grouping of 3 templated hybrid radix/comparison-based sorting algorithms that provide superior worst-case and average-case performance to std::sort: integer_sort, which sorts fixed-size data types that support a rightshift (default of >>) and a comparison (default of <) operator. float_sort, which sorts standard floating-point numbers by safely casting them to integers. string_sort, which sorts variable-length data types, and is optimized for 8-bit character strings. All 3 algorithms have O(n(k/s + s)) runtime where k is the number of bits in the data type and s is a constant, and limited memory overhead (in the kB for realistic inputs). In testing, integer_sort varies from 35% faster to 8X as fast as std::sort, depending on processor, compiler optimizations, and data distribution. float_sort is roughly 7X as fast as std::sort on x86 processors. string_sort is roughly 2X as fast as std::sort. GIL.IO ------ :Author: Christian Henning :Review Manager: Needed :Download: `GIL Google Code Vault <http://gil-contributions.googlecode.com/files/rc2.zip>`__ :Description: I/O extension for boost::gil which allows reading and writing of/in various image formats ( tiff, jpeg, png, etc ). This review will also include the Toolbox extension which adds some common functionality to gil, such as new color spaces, algorithms, etc. AutoBuffer ---------- :Author: Thorsten Ottosen :Review Manager: Needed :Download: `Here <http://www.cs.aau.dk/~nesotto/boost/auto_buffer.zip>`__ :Description: Boost.AutoBuffer provides a container for efficient dynamic, local buffers. Furthermore, the container may be used as an alternative to std::vector, offering greater flexibility and sometimes better performance. String Convert -------------- :Author: Vladimir Batov :Review Manager: Needed :Download: `Boost Vault <http://www.boostpro.com/vault/index.php?action=downloadfile&filename=bo…>`__ :Description: The library takes the approach of boost::lexical_cast in the area of string-to-type and type-to-string conversions, builds on the past boost::lexical_cast experience and advances that conversion functionality further to additionally provide: * throwing and non-throwing conversion-failure behavior; * support for the default value to be returned when conversion fails; * two types of the conversion-failure check -- basic and better/safe; * formatting support based on the standard I/O Streams and the standard (or user-defined) I/O Stream-based manipulators (like std::hex, std::scientific, etc.); * locale support; * support for boost::range-compliant char and wchar_t-based string containers; * no DefaultConstructibility requirement for the Target type; * consistent framework to uniformly incorporate any type-to-type conversions. It is an essential tool with applications making extensive use of configuration files or having to process/prepare considerable amounts of data in, say, XML, etc. Move ---------------- :Author: Ion Gaztanaga :Review Manager: Needed :Download: http://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/sandbox/move/ and online documentation at http://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/sandbox/move/libs/move/doc/html/index.html :Description: In C++0x, move semantics are implemented with the introduction of rvalue references. They allow us to implement move() without verbosity or runtime overhead. Boost.Move is a library that offers tools to implement those move semantics not only in compilers with rvalue references but also in compilers conforming to C++03. Containers ------------------ :Author: Ion Gaztanaga :Review Manager: Needed :Download: http://www.boostpro.com/vault/index.php?action=downloadfile&filename=boost.… and online documentation at http://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/sandbox/move/libs/container/doc/html/index.h… :Description: Boost.Container library implements several well-known containers, including STL containers. The aim of the library is to offers advanced features not present in standard containers or to offer the latest standard draft features for compilers that comply with C++03. Interval Containers Library ------------------------- :Author: Joachim Faulhaber :Review Manager: Needed :Description: The Interval Template Library (Itl) provides intervals and two kinds of interval containers: Interval_sets and interval_maps. Interval_sets and maps can be used just as sets or maps of elements. Yet they are much more space and time efficient when the elements occur in contiguous chunks: intervals. This is obviously the case in many problem domains, particularly in fields that deal with problems related to date and time. Interval containers allow for intersection with interval_sets to work with segmentation. For instance you might want to intersect an interval container with a grid of months and then iterate over those months. Finally interval_maps provide aggregation on associated values, if added intervals overlap with intervals that are stored in the interval_map. This feature is called aggregate on overlap. It is shown by example: :: typedef set<string> guests; interval_map<time, guests> party; guests mary; mary.insert("Mary"); guests harry; harry.insert("Harry"); party += make_pair(interval<time>::rightopen(20:00, 22:00),mary); party += make_pair(interval<time>::rightopen_(21:00, 23:00),harry); // party now contains [20:00, 21:00)->{"Mary"} [21:00, 22:00)->{"Harry","Mary"} //guest sets aggregated on overlap [22:00, 23:00)->{"Harry"} As can be seen from the example an interval_map has both a decompositional behavior (on the time dimension) as well as a accumulative one (on the associated values). Type Traits Extensions -------------------------- :Author: Frédéric Bron :Review Manager: Needed :Download: https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/browser/sandbox/type_traits :Description: The purpose of the addition is to add type traits to detect if types T and U are comparable in the sens of <, <=, >, >=, == or != operators, i.e. if t<u has a sens when t is of type T and u of type U (same for <=, >, >=, ==, !=). The following traits are added: is_equal_to_comparable<T,U> is_greater_comparable<T,U> is_greater_equal_comparable<T,U> is_less_comparable<T,U> is_less_equal_comparable<T,U> is_not_equal_to_comparable<T,U> The names are based on the corresponding names of the standard template library (<functional> header, section 20.3.3 of the standard). The code has the following properties: * returns true if t<u is meaningful and returns a value convertible to bool * returns false if t<u is meaningless. * fails with compile time error if t<u is meaningful and returns void (a possibility to avoid compile time error would be to return true with an operator, trick but this has little sens as returning false would be better) InterThreads ------------------- :Author: Vicente J. Botet Escriba :Review Manager: Needed :Download: `Boost Vault <http://www.boostpro.com/vault/index.php?action=downloadfile&filename=in…>`__ :Description: Boost.InterThreads extends Boost.Threads adding some features: * thread decorator: thread_decorator allows to define setup/cleanup functions which will be called only once by thread: setup before the thread function and cleanup at thread exit. * thread specific shared pointer: this is an extension of the thread_specific_ptr providing access to this thread specific context from other threads. As it is shared the stored pointer is a shared_ptr instead of a raw one. * thread keep alive mechanism: this mechanism allows to detect threads that do not prove that they are alive by calling to the keep_alive_point regularly. When a thread is declared dead a user provided function is called, which by default will abort the program. * thread tuple: defines a thread groupe where the number of threads is know statically and the threads are created at construction time. * set_once: a synchonizer that allows to set a variable only once, notifying to the variable value to whatever is waiting for that. * thread_tuple_once: an extension of the boost::thread_tuple which allows to join the thread finishing the first, using for that the set_once synchronizer. * thread_group_once: an extension of the boost::thread_group which allows to join the thread finishing the first, using for that the set_once synchronizer. (thread_decorator and thread_specific_shared_ptr) are based on the original implementation of threadalert written by Roland Schwarz. Boost.InterThreads extends Boost.Threads adding thread setup/cleanup decorator, thread specific shared pointer, thread keep alive mechanism and thread tuples. Bitfield --------------- :Author: Vicente J. Botet Escriba :Review Manager: Needed :Download: https://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/sandbox/bitfield with documentation available at https://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/sandbox/bitfield/libs/bitfield/doc/index.ht… :Description: Portable bitfields traits. Boost.Bitfield consists of: * a generic bitfield traits class providing generic getter and setter methods. * a BOOST_BITFIELD_DCL macro making easier the definition of the bitfield traits and the bitfield getter and setter functions. Lockfree ------------------ :Author: Tim Blechmann :Review Manager: Needed :Description: boost.lockfree provides implementations of lock-free data structures. lock-free data structures can be accessed by multiple threads without the necessity of blocking synchronization primitives such as guards. lock-free data structures can be used in real-time systems, where blocking algorithms may lead to high worst-case execution times, to avoid priority inversion, or to increase the scalability for multi-processor machines. boost.lockfree provides: * boost::lockfree::fifo, a lock-free fifo queue * boost::lockfree::stack, a lock-free stack the code is available from the boost vault: http://www.boostpro.com/vault/index.php?action=downloadfile&filename=boost_… and from my personal git repository: git://tim.klingt.org/boost_lockfree.git http://tim.klingt.org/git?p=boost_lockfree.git the documentation is available at: http://tim.klingt.org/boost_lockfree/ Libraries under development =========================== Please let us know of any libraries you are currently developing that you intend to submit for review. See https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/wiki/LibrariesUnderConstruction for a current listing of libraries under development.

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Re: [boost] [msm] scalability
by Christophe Henry 14 Jan '10

14 Jan '10

>> I think the trade-off is >> likely to be not so much against run-time but UML features. I'm think >> about transition conflicts. This one is pretty hard on the compiler. >> I'd also bet on submachines and entry/exit pseudo states. >The idea would be to do all parts that are “hard on the compiler” >at runtime. I don't see why you should have to sacrifice features. I understand the idea and also think it is possible. I first need to analyze a bit more in detail which features cost the most compile-time, but I imagine it will probably be quite a new back-end, or do you already have an idea in mind? At first sight I'd think that the underlying data structures will be quite different. If we are talking about big changes, then I'd prefer to write a completely new back-end for which I have a few ideas ;-) But as it will be quite some development effort, I'd prefer to bring a mini MSM first. It'll help for compile-time in many standard cases, be there earlier and have better performance so we will need it anyway.

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Re: [boost] [msm] Review
by Christophe Henry 14 Jan '10

14 Jan '10

>No, I won't spend "a lot more" time trying to decipher the supposedly >hidden meaning of your post and invest the time more wisely by making >MSM more useful. >The link I added seems quite clear to me and anyone interested can >make himself his own opinion by opening it. >You did not bother bringing an argumentation disproving my claim, so I >will simply keep it. >As you also didn't address the more important technical part (multiple >TU) of my answer, I will consider it accepted. I want to apologize for the harsh language I used and the uncharacteristic loss of patience I displayed. I also wanted to let you know that I of course accept your explanation as not doing it would be suspecting you of being dishonest, which I have not been doing at any time. I admit honestly failing to understand what is the impossibility you claim, thus the confusion. I think there is no interest right now for a technical discussion but for the record, I do not accept any impossibility of any sort and the next version of MSM will include a precise example of a multi-TU fsm to illustrate my claim. I wish all of you a happy, successful new year. Christophe

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Re: [boost] [msm] scalability
by Christophe Henry 13 Jan '10

13 Jan '10

>> It might be interesting to contemplate a "fast-compile mode" that >> builds the same logical state machine using the same input syntax but >> trades away a little run time for compile time. > > Yes, I'd be willing to trade that, as my SM is not running in a real > time environment, but is managing user mouse and menu management. I'm also thinking about such back-end but I think the trade-off is likely to be not so much against run-time but UML features. I'm think about transition conflicts. This one is pretty hard on the compiler. I'd also bet on submachines and entry/exit pseudo states. If one is ready to give these ones up, I think we can have pretty easily something running without speed loss (I'd even bet on a speed gain). All it'd take would be the MPL book example cooked with the MSM sauce.

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Re: [boost] [MSM] Meta State Machine Library Accepted
by Christophe Henry 13 Jan '10

13 Jan '10

Hi all, I'm happy to hear this result! Thank you Dave for your support and for taking on the very hard job of managing the review. I also want to thank Franz Alt, David Bergman, Michael Caisse, Barend Gehrels, Darryl Greene, Juraj Ivancic, Erik Nelson and Kenny Riddile for taking the time to write the mentioned thorough reviews and all those who supported the library. The development will of course continue and I hope that many people will further provide me with more valuable nuggets. I used the time after the review to continue the development. You will find in the sandbox a few new features: - increased dispatch speed and other optimizations. - removed some SFINAE to help poor VC8 ;-) - new eUML syntax as discussed. You can now write: target == source + event [guard] /action or source + event [guard] /action == target. - base events: if eventA is the base of eventB, you can use eventB for transitions defined for eventA (doc not updated yet) - internal transitions (first syntax). More to come in the next days. Next, as required, I'll rewrite the doc, add the reference and some UML tutorial. So, as Dave wrote, a lot of work is waiting :) Thanks again to all of you!

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