March 2022 - 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 Governance?
by René Ferdinand Rivera Morell 10 Aug '24

10 Aug '24

A disclaimer: I write this solely as a Boost Library author. And not in any other capacity or representing any other interest. It's now been at least a year since Boost switched from the Software Freedom Conservancy to the Boost Foundation for its governance organization. But have people noticed any difference? Did you know that switch happened? Did you know that they held an election for the Board of Directors and for the Officers? Do you know when that election happened? Do you know who got elected? Do you know how they were selected? Do you know what their responsibilities are? Do you know what their bylaws are? Do you know their financials? More importantly: Did you answer "no" to any of those questions? As a library author, I can say I definitely answered no to many of those questions. This is a problem. As authors, without asking, we should know those answers from the organization that governs our work. We should have input into how that organization governs. In other words, we deserve open and transparent governance; not the closed and opaque status quo. -- -- René Ferdinand Rivera Morell -- Don't Assume Anything -- No Supone Nada -- Robot Dreams - http://robot-dreams.net

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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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[container] Contributing 'stationary_vector' to Boost
by Mehrdad Niknami 13 Jun '22

13 Jun '22

Hi all, Happy new year! New mailing list member here. I've developed an STL-style stationary_vector class that retains elements in-place when growing. Very briefly, it is effectively a piecewise-contiguous vector, with the following advantages over vector: - Appending has O(1) overhead in the *worst* case (e.g., push_back() does not move elements) - Insertion and random-access can be done in parallel, as prior iterators & references remain valid This has a variety of benefits, including better UX (no "hiccups" due to reallocations), and the ability to simplify parallel processing of streaming data. It occurred to me the larger C++ community might find this useful. I was wondering if there would be interest in incorporating it into Boost.Container, and if so, what steps I could take to make that happen? I'm of course happy to discuss the design etc. with anyone who might be interested. Summary: https://github.com/mehrdadn/libvital/blob/master/doc/vital/container/statio… Implementation: https://github.com/mehrdadn/libvital/blob/master/include/vital/container/st… Thank you, Mehrdad

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[release] Boost 1.7.0 beta 1 released
by Marshall Clow 13 Apr '22

13 Apr '22

Boost release 1.77.0 beta 1 is now available at: <https://boostorg.jfrog.io/artifactory/main/beta/1.78.0.beta1/source/> The SHA256 checksums are as follows: 7a3a025451dfa2923129214eef7d16b03c02310a353d02158a549f6caa4284b0 boost_1_78_0_b1.tar.bz2 c491b1dcb916195598aa6581d6708d57fcc750516641c22511c088d572de9c07 boost_1_78_0_b1.tar.gz 35e7a3b0eb412a3933e57c72ba96374eb7d88ff1f89dbec62a16d67ffea2105a boost_1_78_0_b1.7z e6b68feb2f63401c96ca9fe25e939b409189fbe526a6e784e4bd69832c8f09cb boost_1_78_0_b1.zip For details of what's in the release, see <https://www.boost.org/users/history/version_1_78_0.html>. Please download the beta, give it a try, and report any problems you encounter. Thanks, -- The Boost Release Team

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Proposing a MySQL client library for inclusion in Boost
by Ruben Perez 08 Apr '22

08 Apr '22

Hi all, I would like to propose my MySQL client library for inclusion in Boost. The library features asynchronous communication with MySQL and MariaDB servers, allowing the user to use txt queries and prepared statements. The library is based on Boost.Asio and follows its asynchronous model (in a similar way Boost.Beast does). The library is specific to MySQL and MariaDB systems, and is not intended as a SQL framework or ORM. It fits use cases like HTTP servers (possibly already using Beast), ETL pipelines or any other application that needs to access a MySQL database and wants to benefit from Asio's asynchrony. Please note that the library is a full implementation of MySQL wire protocol and does not use libmysqlclient under the hood. I'm looking for people who officially endorse the library. You can see the code in this GitHub repository <https://github.com/anarthal/mysql>, and the documentation is here <https://anarthal.github.io/mysql/index.html>. Many thanks, Ruben.

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[release] 1.79.0 post-beta merges
by Marshall Clow 06 Apr '22

06 Apr '22

The master branch is is now open for post-beta merges, but only as described in the Post-Beta Merge Policy. See <https://github.com/boostorg/wiki/wiki/Releases%3A-Beta-Merge-Policy <https://github.com/boostorg/wiki/wiki/Releases%3A-Beta-Merge-Policy>> Reminder: The master branch closes for the release on Wednesday, April 6th. Full calendar here: https://www.boost.org/development/ <https://www.boost.org/development/> — Marshall P.S Doc changes and test changes do NOT require release manager approval to be merged.

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Should boost have ofind(_if), that returns boost::optional<T&>?
by Ivan Matek 06 Apr '22

06 Apr '22

Hi, I have been thinking for this for a long time so I wanted to get the feedback from others. As you probably know better than me there is a bit of a drama <https://brevzin.github.io/c++/2021/12/13/optional-ref-ptr/>when it comes to std::optional<T&> and from what I see it will not be in C++23 for sure. I believe this gives an opportunity to boost to provide something nice for the users. Now the issues are the following: AFAIK boost only has old ranges and iterator based algorithms, ideally we would just have something like std:: ranges and add the ofind/ofind_if to those, but AFAIK those do not exist. So I think best thing would be to add it to boost::algorithm <https://github.com/boostorg/algorithm/tree/develop/include/boost/algorithm> . There are further questions like, should boost containers like map/unordered_map gain similar functionality, but I think deciding if we want the general algorithm is the first step. Another option I can think of is that those algorithms return something like a 0 or 1 element view(so you could access the optional value with range based for loop). This seems weird to me, so I would prefer boost::optional<T&>. There is s a short example on godbolt <https://godbolt.org/z/W9K3na9Gc>, but don't look at implementation too much, it was just something I hacked quickly, I am mostly interested in in feedback on if functionality would be nice addition to boost. regards, Ivan

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Re: [boost] Proposing a MySQL client library for inclusion in Boost
by Marcelo Zimbres Silva 02 Apr '22

02 Apr '22

Hi Ruben, I have had a look into your library and some questions arise > https://anarthal.github.io/mysql/mysql/ref/boost__mysql__resultset/async_re… > The handler signature for this operation is void(boost::mysql::error_code, std::vector<boost::mysql::row>). > etc. Having a std::vector in the signature of the completion handler is unusual in ASIO. In general large objects should be passed as parameters in the async operation e.g. socket::async_read gets a dynamic_buffer which is a lightweight view to storage. Additionally, there is not support for custom allocators. That wouldn't be a big problem to me if I could reuse the same memory for each request but the interface above prevents me from doing so. > https://anarthal.github.io/mysql/mysql/ref/boost__mysql__connection/async_q… > The handler signature for this operation is void(boost::mysql::error_code, boost::mysql::resultset<Stream>) Hier the completion handler is returning an io object i.e. boost::mysql::resultset, which is also unusual as far as I can see. Does that play nice with executors? I would prefer having the completion handler return config parameters with which I can instantiate a boost::mysql::resultset myself in my desired executor. > https://anarthal.github.io/mysql/mysql/ref/boost__mysql__connection.html I don't see a reason for this class, or at least I fail to see what state does the mysql protocol imposes on you that would justify this class. I would prefer free funcitions much more here, for example, in the same way as beast::http::async_read. > https://anarthal.github.io/mysql/mysql/ref/boost__mysql__value/get_std_opti… > https://anarthal.github.io/mysql/mysql/ref/boost__mysql__value/get_optional… Sounds also unusual to have two member functions for the different versions of optional. Regards, Marcelo

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