April 2017 - Boost - lists.boost.org

[Stacktrace] Second review begins today 17th Mar ends 26th Mar
by Niall Douglas 22 Apr '17

22 Apr '17

I am pleased to announce the second review of the proposed Boost.Stacktrace library running from today until Sunday 26th. Stacktrace is an optionally header-only library providing multiple implementation backends. At its very simplest it lets you capture the stack backtrace for the calling thread and to print it to a std::ostream& of your choice. The basic_stacktrace<> class quacks like a STL container of frame object instances. The rest of the API pretty much follows STL design principles for the most part. Use is therefore unsurprising. You can find the documentation at http://apolukhin.github.io/stacktrace/index.html and the github repo at https://github.com/apolukhin/stacktrace. Review guidelines ================= This is a second review of this library with many changes implemented in response to feedback from the previous review. My previous review report can be found at http://lists.boost.org/boost-announce/2017/01/0486.php where I made the following conditions for acceptance: 1. That the documentation more clearly set out what Stacktrace does and especially does not do, and that the default facilities provided are those of the Minimum Viable Product described above i.e. no source file nor line number discovery, no external dependencies on libraries not always provided on the target platform, no invocation of child processes, no async safety during stacktrace parsing. Stacktrace ought to be pared back to the minimum viable product featureset with no external dependencies at all. 2. That suitable predefined macros opt in to additional functionality such as serialisation of offset translated backtraces, retrieval of source code path and line number etc. Enabling these may introduce dependencies on third party libraries not always present on a system such as libunwind, or on third party helper utilities such as addr2line. I would recommend that the APIs the use of which are dependent on such third party items are entirely compiled out of Stacktrace when the macro enabling them is not defined. 3. That the documentation describe ONLY the default minimum viable product functionality in its tutorial and quick start. All extra functionality enabled by macros is to be relocated into a separate documentation section away from the main documentation e.g. "Advanced/optional features". 4. That APIs made available only when a given macro has turned them on are documented as such in the API reference docs. Antony hasn't entirely met my conditions, hence this second review. He has instead implemented this changelog: * Reimplemented boost::stacktrace::basic_stacktrace class to accept allocators and to have a small size * Added outputting of the path to the binary object into the stacktrace, when source location is not available * Allowed to use `libbacktrace` - a defacto standard for GCC/CLANG backtracing that does not fork and has a permissive license * Optimized stacktrace and frames ostreaming * Removed backends and made the default tracing to have only platform basic functionality. Added macros to enable additional functionality. * Fixed (theoretically) MinGW compilation * Added functions for async-safe dumping into memory or descriptor * Changed signal handling example to be async-signal-safe * Allowed users to choose how many frames to skip during stack capture * Removed `boost::stacktrace::stacktrace` functions and other internals from printed stack traces * Updated docs: * examples now use Boost.Exception * removed all the references to "backend" * reduced macro count * "Build, Macros and Backends" section was rewritten and became "Configuration and Build" * added note that library is C++03 * added examples on storing traces into shared memory * updated all the human readable dumps It is up to the Boost community as to whether this revised library is now acceptable without any conditions, or with conditions. Reviews should be submitted to the developer list (boost_at_[hidden]), preferably with '[stacktrace]' in the subject. Or if you don't wish to for some reason or are not subscribed to the developer list you can send them privately to me at 's_sourceforge at nedprod dot com'. If so, please let me know whether or not you'd like your review to be forwarded to the list. For your review you may wish to consider the following questions: - What is your evaluation of the design? - What is your evaluation of the implementation? - What is your evaluation of the documentation? - What is your evaluation of the potential usefulness of the library? - Did you try to use the library? With what compiler? Did you have any problems? - How much effort did you put into your evaluation? A glance? A quick reading? In-depth study? - Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain? And finally, every review should attempt to answer this question: - Do you think the library should be accepted as a Boost library? Be sure to say this explicitly so that your other comments don't obscure your overall opinion. Even if you do not wish to give a full review any technical comment regarding the library is welcome as part of the review period and will help me as the review manager decide whether the library should be accepted as a Boost library. Any questions about the use of the library are also welcome. Niall -- ned Productions Limited Consulting http://www.nedproductions.biz/ http://ie.linkedin.com/in/nialldouglas/

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Locating Visual Studio 2017 on disk
by Andrew Pardoe 21 Apr '17

21 Apr '17

Folks, We had a number of conversations about the fact that VS 2017 could be installed in any location, or multiple locations, and no longer created a registry key pointing to an install location. There's also the problem that an installation of VS 2017 may or may not contain C++ tools (as was the case with VS 2015.) The solution proposed by the VS team-creating a tool called VSWhere-was inadequate for some scenarios such as Boost's because it would have required either caching a binary in your source enlistment or compiling code to locate the compiler. A number of people on this list asked for a more straightforward solution. I'm happy to tell you that your feedback was heard. We're going to start shipping the VSWhere tool in a known location on any machine that has VS 2017. More details can be found in this blog post: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/heaths/2017/04/21/vswhere-is-now-installed… This doesn't fix the problem for all the versions of VS 2017 that are installed already. And this doesn't help our version numbers to make any more sense (although I'm pushing to fix that as well.) But at least in the future you'll be able to locate VS installs from a scripted environment. Thanks for being loud and reaching out to us. As always, I'm happy to help you with any issues you might have with MSVC-just ask. Andrew Pardoe MSVC compiler & tools

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[stacktrace] Please for into boostorg repo
by Antony Polukhin 20 Apr '17

20 Apr '17

Hi, Stacktrace library was accepted into the Boost http://www.boost.org/community/review_schedule.html Please fork the repo https://github.com/apolukhin/stacktrace into boostorg and give me admin rights to that repo. -- Best regards, Antony Polukhin

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Boost Library Incubator Statistics
by Robert Ramey 20 Apr '17

20 Apr '17

In the course of updating the Boost Library Incubator website, I gathered some summary statistics which some might find interesting. 40 Number of libraries submitted 2 libraries not accepted into the incubator of lack docs, test, etc. 11 libraries reviews by boost 9 accepted 2 rejected All in all, I'm thinking these numbers aren't too bad for boost and the incubator. I would like to see more submissions - but the submissions we've received seem to be better than average quality and worthy of consideration. Hopefully this has made the review process more efficient. A couple of libraries have also been accepted (and rejected) without having been placed in the incubator. The number is small. I think this validates the incubator as useful, but not necessary and libraries authors should continue to be encouraged, but not required, to submit library candidates to the incubator. Other than the above, I'm not going to try to draw any conclusions from the above admittedly anecdotal data. I would also remind boosters that if you're logged into the incubator, you can display statistics on viewership for a particular library by using the "Display Statistics" button on the library page. This is a crude but someone engaging way to get an idea of how many people have looked at the library page. The attached shows visits to the safe numerics library page in the last 90 days. Robert Ramey

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List-Id mail header
by Christoph Ludwig 20 Apr '17

20 Apr '17

Hi, starting yesterday, the List-Id header in the mails I get from the Boost mailing list changed. It used to be: List-Id: Boost developers' mailing list <boost.lists.boost.org> Now it is: List-Id: Boost developers' mailing list <boost.wowbagger.crest.iu.edu> Due to this change, the mail filter I have used for years fails to identify the messages as boost mailing list traffic. Therefore, the messages end up in my regular inbox instead of the dedicated folder I have for the mailing list. Of course, I can easily update my mail filter, that's no big deal. I just want to know: Did I miss an announcement, was this change intended? Will the List-Id use the wowbagger identifier from now on? Cheers, Christoph

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[release] Boost 1.64.0
by Rene Rivera 20 Apr '17

20 Apr '17

Release 1.64.0 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 one new library and numerous enhancements and bug fixes for existing libraries. For details, including download links, see < http://www.boost.org/users/history/version_1_64_0.html> You can also download directly from: < https://dl.bintray.com/boostorg/release/1.64.0/> To install this release on your system, see < http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/release/more/getting_started/index.html> Thanks to everyone who participated in this release. Thanks, -- The Boost Release Team Vladimir Prus, Rene Rivera, Marshall Clow, Eric Niebler, Daniel James, Beman Dawes

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[release] Boost 1.64.0 Release Candidate 1
by Rene Rivera 19 Apr '17

19 Apr '17

The release candidates for the 1.64.0 release are now available at: <https://dl.bintray.com/boostorg/beta/1.64.0.rc.1/> The SHA256 checksums are as follows: 49c6abfeb5b480f6a86119c0d57235966b4690ee6ff9e6401ee868244808d155 boost_1_64_0_rc1.7z 7bcc5caace97baa948931d712ea5f37038dbb1c5d89b43ad4def4ed7cb683332 boost_1_64_0_rc1.tar.bz2 0445c22a5ef3bd69f5dfb48354978421a85ab395254a26b1ffb0aa1bfd63a108 boost_1_64_0_rc1.tar.gz b99973c805f38b549dbeaf88701c0abeff8b0e8eaa4066df47cac10a32097523 boost_1_64_0_rc1.zip As always, the release managers would appreciate it if you download the candidate of your choice and give building it a try. Please report both success and failure, and anything else that is noteworthy. -- The Boost Release Team -- -- Rene Rivera -- Grafik - Don't Assume Anything -- Robot Dreams - http://robot-dreams.net -- rrivera/acm.org (msn) - grafikrobot/aim,yahoo,skype,efnet,gmail

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[Trac] Spam and suspicious attachments
by Mateusz Loskot 19 Apr '17

19 Apr '17

Hi, I'm not sure what is the correct admin contact to report spam on Trac, so posting here. Number of suspicious attachments (.exe, .jpg) have been submitted to this ticket during recent period of 3 years https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/8070 Best regards, -- Mateusz Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net

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[ranges] Please merge the long standing pull request
by Antony Polukhin 18 Apr '17

18 Apr '17

Hello, There's a year old pull request https://github.com/boostorg/range/pull/44 Please merge it to the develop branch. The pull request is a blocker for improving Boost.Algorithm (https://github.com/boostorg/algorithm/pull/35) https://github.com/boostorg/range/pull/44 changes were adopted into C++17 standard library.So the change is not innovative. -- Best regards, Antony Polukhin

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Serialization support for colony container
by Brian Wood 17 Apr '17

17 Apr '17

Shalom It's looking like Matthew Bentley's colony container -- http://plflib.org -- is going to pass over Boost on it's way to the standard. I've added serialization support for this container to the C++ Middleware Writer and added some code that tests that support to my repo -- https://bitbucket.org/webenezer/onwards . I enjoyed Jon Kalb's CppChat show where he talked to Matthew about this container -- http://www.slashslash.info/cppchat/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFAJ238rBNw -- Brian Ebenezer Enterprises - In G-d we trust. http://webEbenezer.net

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