December 2020 - Boost - lists.boost.org

CMake Announcement from Boost Steering Committee
by Jon Kalb 13 Aug '24

13 Aug '24

The libraries produced by the Boost community have had a greater impact on the way that the C++ community writes code than any other library implementation. The focus of the Boost community will always be on the libraries, but it is undeniable that we are dependent on and often limited by the infrastructure of our trade. Years ago, the move to Git was contentious; yet, it was required to improve development. In a similar vein our build system has become an impediment for many developers and users, existing and prospective. Therefore, we, the Steering Committee, announce to the Boost community our desire and intent to move Boost’s build system to CMake for users and developers alike. We are soliciting comments and proposals from the community to guide the process and the goals. Our desire is that the community can come to consensus by the end of the calendar year with a vision of supporting users and developers. We understand that the actual process of achieving the end goal will be long, time consuming, and not without its share of conflict. We also recognize that the Boost community is comprised of bright and passionate individuals that are eager to get involved and help get work done. The members of the Steering Committee have been encouraged by the discussions and activity surrounding CMake on the mailing lists over the years and know that many people have voiced visions. We hope that each of you rejoins the discussion to support this initiative and contributes to the common goal of improving Boost’s integration into the broader C++ ecosystem. For the Boost Steering Committee, Jon Kalb, Chair jonkalb(a)boost.org

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Boost.Text is looking for a (mini-)review manager
by Zach Laine 07 Dec '22

07 Dec '22

I've made all the recommended changes to Boost.Text that came up in the review. Glen, the previous review manager, recommended a mini review of Boost.Text once I'd made those changes. If you'd like to manage the mini-review, please let me know. For everyone, including potential reviewers and review managers, here are the major changes: * All the specific review feedback issues have been addressed. * The string layer is now gone. * The text layer got a major re-work. It is now a set of template-based adaptors (basic_text<>, vs. a text typedef. etc.), which lets everyone get what they want. You can change the underlying storage type (including whatever allocator you prefer), select UTF-8 or UTF-16, and change the normalization form. Glen recommended I drop this layer, but the library is way less useful without this stuff, and these changes address all the concerns raised about the text layer in the review. The updated docs can be found here: https://tzlaine.github.io/text/doc/html/index.html Oh yeah, and I added concept constraints to the whole library when you build in C++20 mode. Zach

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[review][JSON] Review of JSON starts today: Sept 14 - Sept 23
by Pranam Lashkari 09 Aug '22

09 Aug '22

Boost formal review of Vinnie Falco and Krystian Stasiowski's library JSON starts today and will run for 10 days ending on 23 Sept 2020. Both of these authors have already developed a couple of libraries which are accepted in Boost(boost beast and Static String) This library focuses on a common and popular use-case for JSON. It provides a container to hold parsed and serialised JSON types. It provides more flexibility and better benchmark performance than its competitors. JSON highlights the following features in the documentation: - Fast compilation - Require only C++11 - Fast streaming parser and serializer - Easy and safe API with allocator support - Constant-time key lookup for objects - Options to allow non-standard JSON - Compile without Boost, define BOOST_JSON_STANDALONE - Optional header-only, without linking to a library (a point I would like to add in highlight: it has cool Jason logo 😝) To quickly understand and get the flavour of the library take a look at "Quick Look" <http://master.json.cpp.al/json/usage/quick_look.html> You can find the source code to be reviewed here: <https://github.com/CPPAlliance/json/tree/master> You can find the latest documentation here: <http://master.json.cpp.al/> Benchmarks are also given in the document which can be found here: <http://master.json.cpp.al/json/benchmarks.html> Some people have also given the early reviews, the thread can be found here: <https://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2020/09/249745.php> Please provide in your review information you think is valuable to understand your choice to ACCEPT or REJECT including JSON as a Boost library. Please be explicit about your decision (ACCEPT or REJECT). Some other questions you might want to consider answering: - 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 which compiler(s)? 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? More information about the Boost Formal Review Process can be found here: <http://www.boost.org/community/reviews.html> Thank you for your effort in the Boost community. -- Thank you, Pranam Lashkari, https://lpranam.github.io/

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Adding my sorting algorithm, ska_sort, to boost, attempt 2
by Malte Skarupke 23 Nov '21

23 Nov '21

Hi everyone, I started a discussion about this in October, but at the time the maintainer of the sort library was busy, then I was busy, so now it's January... I wrote a generalized version of radix sort a couple years ago and gave a talk about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqs87a_7zxw I would like to get a new version of that sorting algorithm into boost. It's faster than what I showed several years ago. It's also even more general and has a new interface that should be easier to extend. I uploaded the code here: https://github.com/skarupke/sort/tree/master The documentation is also already updated with new benchmark results. Let me know what's required to get this into boost. Would you like this in the form of a pull request? One of the big things that probably needs review is the interface, since radix sorting works differently than comparison based sorting. For most normal uses you just need to provide a sort key, but more complicated cases can get more complicated. I tried very hard to make everything easy, but I'd also be curious if others can come up with better ways of doing the interface. Thanks, Malte -- Malte Skarupke malteskarupke(a)fastmail.fm

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Re: [boost] Boost website changes and .'cxxstd'
by Donovan Dikaio 19 Mar '21

19 Mar '21

I can look into it. But needs to make the requirements clear. So, the task is to show *C++ standard minimum level: C++nn* for Standard attribute for each lib in this page: C++ standard minimum level: C++nn ? And we could replace nn with the actual number by checking the *cxxstd* key in a library's meta info json file. Please let me know if I got it right. On Fri, Dec 25, 2020 at 10:00 AM Louis Tatta <louis(a)cppalliance.org> wrote: > > > ---------- Forwarded message --------- > From: Edward Diener via Boost <boost(a)lists.boost.org> > Date: Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 7:39 PM > Subject: [boost] Boost website changes and .'cxxstd' > To: <boost(a)lists.boost.org> > CC: Edward Diener <eldiener(a)tropicsoft.com> > > > Even though I have worked a little with PHP in the past I do not have > the talent to make the change to the website which would incorporate the > addition of the meta information json field 'cxxstd' to the Boost > documentation web page for each library. The idea is that if 'cxxstd' is > set to a value the documentation for that library would also show: > > C++ standard minimum level: C++nn > > where nn would be 11, 14, 17, or 20 depending on the value of 'cxxstd'. > Alternatively if there is no 'cxxstd' entry for a library or if the > value of 'cxxstd' is '03', we could either specify 'nn' as '03' or leave > off the line stating the 'C++ standard minimum level completely. > > On the face of it this should be doable in the website code but > evidently Daniel James is the only one who really understands how this > works in the code and he is no longer active in Boost. So if someone > else who understands the website code and PHP could do this it would be > appreciated, since I think it will be valuable telling end-users whether > a Boost library is usable at the C++ compiler level they are using. > > > _______________________________________________ > Unsubscribe & other changes: > http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost >

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[release] Reminder about 1.75.0 release notes
by Marshall Clow 11 Mar '21

11 Mar '21

The master branch is closing on Wednesday for the 1.75.0 release. If you have information that should go into the release notes, now’s the time to add it. Create a PR against https://github.com/boostorg/website/blob/master/feed/history/boost_1_75_0.q… <https://github.com/boostorg/website/blob/master/feed/history/boost_1_75_0.q…> — Marshall

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Feedback desired for neural networks library
by Sergei Marchenko 11 Jan '21

11 Jan '21

Hi everyone, I have a template-based library with several common types of layers which can be assembled into various neural networks: https://github.com/svm-git/NeuralNet, and I would love to get community feedback on the overall design, any issues or missing features, and how interesting a library like that would be in general. I've been watching the trends and research reports in the AI/ML space, and I feel that the recent announcements of the successful models for image classification, computer vision or natural language processing, push the focus towards very complex and computationally intensive networks. However, I think that the idea behind multi-layer networks is very powerful, and is applicable in many domains, where even a small and lightweight model can be used successfully. I also think that if developers have an access to a library of building blocks that allows them to train and run NN anywhere a C++ code can run, it may encourage a lot of good applications. In the current state, the library is fairly small and should be easy to review. It was built with two main goals in mind: * Provide a collection of building blocks that share a common interface which allows plug'n'play construction of more complex NNs. * Compile-time verification of the internal consistency of the network. I.e. if a layer's output size does not match the next layer's input, it is caught at the very early stage. Once it seems like there is some consensus on the core design and usefulness of such library, I am willing to do the work necessary to make the library consistent with Boost requirements for naming convention, folder structure, unit tests etc. The library relies on the C++ 11 language features and has a dependency on just a few STL components, so I think it should be straightforward to merge into Boost. Best regards, Sergei Marchenko.

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C++11 on up Boost libraries
by Edward Diener 04 Jan '21

04 Jan '21

In my effort to set the meta information of 'cxxstd' for the appropriate C++11 on up libraries, my PRs for these libraries have been kindly merged to 'develop' by the library maintainers: beast callable_traits context convert coroutine2 fiber geometry gil hana histogram hof json leaf mp11 nowide outcome pfr process safe_numerics static_string stl_interfaces variant2 yap If anyone knows of any other current library which is a C++11 on up library, please tell me. My testing showed that all other Boost libraries will work in C++03 mode, but maybe I missed some other library which is a C++11 on up library. Needless to say other libraries have noted their attention to move from C++03 to C++11 in the near future. If any library does change the C++ mode necessary to use that library, I hope the maintainer(s) of that library will update the 'cxxstd' meta information appropriately. If we can get the website to work properly using the 'cxxstd' meta information, end-users should be able to know immediately whether a Boost library is usable depending on the C++ standard mode their are using.

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Re: [boost] Boost website changes and .'cxxstd`
by Donovan Dikaio 30 Dec '20

30 Dec '20

Hi Edward, you're right. The beta website link is https://beta.boost.org/ FYI, there is a file 'libraries.txt' in the source codes which contains all the libraries info. It looks like that it can be generated by a site tool. To my codes review, there exist multiple records for a library for various versions in the above text file. And the codes check and compare a library record’s version info with the current version, and pick one matching a condition. There is no record with 'cxxstd' field at the text file for beta website but for main site. Unfortunately, there is no one to match version comparison condition for main site as well at the moment. The updates codes of beta website will only show 'C++ standard minimum level' with 'cxxstd' value only if a 'cxxstd' value exists.

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Potential order statistic tree?
by Soronel Haetir 29 Dec '20

29 Dec '20

Boost developers, Would there be interest in adding an order statistic tree to the boost library? That is, a tree that instead of being sorted simply keeps nodes in whatever order is specified, along with a (potentially multi-index) per-node value and a total of per-node values of each node and its left-descent tree. I currently have two such types, a very capable intrusive version (not based on boost::intrusive though using some of the same ideas) and a less capable non-intrusive form that uses the mechanics of the intrusive form as an implementation detail. The reason for not being based on Boost.Intrusive is that the tree algorithms that Boost.Intrusive provides are all for search trees and this very definitely is not, plus the need to alter node weights during insert, delete and rotations and the Boost.Intrusive algorithm providers not having a good place to add that behavior. I have personally found this type very useful while implementing a rope container and also while implementing tracking for various parts of a text editor (that is, paragraph, line and run positions) (in terms of characters, graphemes and screen height). Perhaps the major drawback to what I have is that I have not been careful to isolate c++-version dependent code. Although I know it does compile with the latest msvc 2019 as well as the clang 10.0 that MS ships. I am simply not sure whether such a type has a broad enough appeal to make the work of adding it to boost worthwhile. -- Soronel Haetir soronel.haetir(a)gmail.com

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