December 2023 - Boost - lists.boost.org

The master branch is now open for all changes
by Marshall Clow 14 Dec '23

14 Dec '23

Thanks to everyone who participated in the release! — Marshall

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[release] Boost 1.84.0
by Marshall Clow 14 Dec '23

14 Dec '23

Release 1.84.0 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 contain two new libraries, numerous enhancements and bug fixes for existing libraries. For details, including download links, see <http://www.boost.org/users/news/version_1.84.0> You can also download directly from: <https://boostorg.jfrog.io/artifactory/main/release/1.84.0/source> 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. -- The Boost Release Team Marshall Clow, Glen Fernandes

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[Fiber] aligned_storage is deprecated
by Niall Douglas 12 Dec '23

12 Dec '23

On Boost 1.81 with clang 18 in C++ 23 mode: ``` [build] /usr/include/boost/fiber/future/detail/shared_state.hpp:160:19: warning: 'aligned_storage<4, 4>' is deprecated [-Wdeprecated-declarations] [build] 160 | typename std::aligned_storage< sizeof( R), alignof( R) >::type storage_{}; [build] | ^ [build] /usr/include/boost/fiber/future/promise.hpp:28:22: note: in instantiation of template class 'boost::fibers::detail::shared_state<int>' requested here [build] 28 | typedef typename shared_state< R >::ptr_type ptr_type; ``` It could have been fixed upstream since, I haven't checked. Niall

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[release] Boost 1.84.0 Release Candidate 1 is available
by Marshall Clow 12 Dec '23

12 Dec '23

The first release candidates for the 1.84.0 release are now available at: <https://boostorg.jfrog.io/artifactory/main/release/1.84.0/source/> The SHA256 checksums are as follows: cc4b893acf645c9d4b698e9a0f08ca8846aa5d6c68275c14c3e7949c24109454 boost_1_84_0_rc1.tar.bz2 cc77eb8ed25da4d596b25e77e4dbb6c5afaac9cddd00dc9ca947b6b268cc76a4 boost_1_84_0_rc1.zip 81a4d10075731966477276c47324ecd9cac02da49899d36c48eba66e40014f25 boost_1_84_0_rc1.7z a5800f405508f5df8114558ca9855d2640a2de8f0445f051fa1c7c3383045724 boost_1_84_0_rc1.tar.gz 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 Release managers

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[scope] review
by Julien Blanc 07 Dec '23

07 Dec '23

Hi, This is my review of the proposed boost scope library. * Does this library bring real benefit to C++ developers for real world use-case? Yes. Scope guards are a well-known and widely used feature, nearly every code-base has some implementation of it. The same goes for raii resource wrappers. * Do you have an application for this library? I would consider using it for new projects. It does not, however, offer significant value at the time which would justify migrating from our homebrew scope guard. Worse, it misses some guarantees that makes it less fitted (but arguably it is more generic than what we use now). * Does the API match with current best practices? The API is copied from a TS proposal, for some parts. Most of my griefs against the API also applies to the TS. While I was not fond of it at the start, i think there's a clear value in differentiating scope_success and scope_fail. The first one is allowed to throw, the second is not. This, however, is not a strong requirement, but a general advice. It thus raises the concern about why not simply giving a boolean parameter to the scope_guard handler function, and letting it act accordingly. I suggest making the noexcept-ness of scope_fail executor a strong requirement. scope_success / scope_fail are not default-constructible, although they have a valid empty state. While there's a rationale behind this (it is a bit uncommon to create a scope guard that does nothing), it is a limitation for the sake of nothing. Initializing an empty scope_exit allows scope escaping (useful when initializing the scope guard in the body of an if statement). There will always be the possiblity to do it with an optional, so it just seems that forbidding default construction has no value. To check whether a scope_xxx is active or not, one has to call the active() method. To check whether a unique_resource has a value, one has to call the allocated() method. These are additions compared to the TS. While they may be useful, the names are inconsistent, both are new, also inconsistent with what other nullable types (optional, unique_ptr, variant...) uses. While this is common practice accross the c++ standard, I would not called this *best*. This leads to problems for generic code, and proposals such as this one: https://herbsutter.com/2022/09/25/something-i-implemented-today-is-void/ . In both case, i think at least an operator bool() should be provided, because it's a more widespread and common way to check for emptiness / valid state. scope_success / fails / exit takes an additional parameter (extension over TS), which is the execution condition. scope_success executes when the condition returns false. This is unintuitive, and something i will usually get wrong. While i get the reasoning behind, i think it tells more in favor of a scope_conditional<SuccessHandler, FailureHandler> interface. I'm not sure there's a lot of use-cases for a success_only or fail_only scope guard, especially since you can release in case of success, to avoid the cost of the failure check. About this customizable failure detector, i'm not found of the idea. The default, detection of a current exception, is a sane one. And it allows us to require FailureHandler to be noexcept. That's no longer the case if you allow customizing the failure detector. I'm not sure it's worth the tradeoff, since the failure detection could always be done inside the body of a standard unconditional scope_exit. Finally, i don't get the point of set_active. Sure, it's cheap to implement, but do we really want to encourage dynamically enabling scope guards ? Disabling a scope guard makes a lot of sense, that's what you do to disable a rollback scope_guard upon successful operation. Dynamically enabling it looks more like being hostile to the reader to me. In all cases, it's possible to get this behaviour with a boolean inside the scope guard callback, so this use case is already addressed. There's no need for it to be a first-class citizen. I like the idea of the lighter, unconditional, scope_final, which is missing in the TS. * Is the scope of the library well-defined? unique_resource and scope_exit are quite different beasts. They only have in common being RAII. But that also include unique_lock, unique_ptr, and nobody thought about making them part of the same library. I think it is a mistake to mix them. unique_resource takes three template parameters, the third one being a predicate telling if the resource is valid. I understand the wish to avoid storing an extra information, when there's a possibility to do without by storing an invalid value. But to me, it looks like a more widespread problem already solved, for example by https://github.com/akrzemi1/markable . It would be far better IMHO to get markable in boost, and have unique_resource specialized for markable<X> than replicating most of its functionality into unique_resource. * Is the documentation helpful and clear? The documentation is clear enough, although i could not find some information that i think should be emphasized more (ie, what the library guarantees in terms of pre / post conditions, noexceptness, etc). I don't like the way the reference section subitems are links to the file headers descriptions, and not links to class descriptions. I'd prefer something like: Reference * template< > class scope_exit * template< > class scope_final * ... instead of the headers, for which i usually don't care (i just need to know which header i need to include, and this information is provided in the class description). There are a few examples in the documentation that can be improved. There's always room for improvement, the overall quality is good. * Did you try to use it? What problems or surprises did you encounter? How much time did you spent? I made some small experiments with it. I spent around 6-8 hours reviewing the library and writing this review. Most of the time was spent reading the documentation and checking the behaviour. No problems and no surprises so far. * What is your evaluation of the implementation? The library is big (~2,5k lines of code), given what it offers. Most of this comes from the fact that the library offers a lot of customization points, maybe too much. Others have pointed that it reimplements some standard features, for the sake of not including some headers. I don't like this choice, but I don't know what's boost policy in this regard is. In all cases, a reimplementation with a name is better than nothing. In particular, there are some static_cast<T&&> which would advantagely be replaced by a detail::forward<T>, the latter being far more readable than the former. It's a shame that compact_storage is not provided as a facility: i guess there are several similar implementation across boost. But that's not the library's fault. Outside that, the organisation is clean, and the code largely readable, given that it needs to be compatible with C++11. * What is you final evaluation of the library? My current recommandation is to CONDITIONNALY ACCEPT the library. I think the following should be adressed, but i'd note that several of these comments also applies to the TS: - scope_success and scope_fail should be unified into a single call, taking two callbacks. This will make a slightly bigger object, but if you plan on detecting exceptions then you don't mind the extra cost anyway. And it will allow to evaluate the condition only once, so that may prove a gain in several situations. - scope_success and scope_fail should not take an execution condition. Exception detection should be enough for everyone, or else you should resort to scope_exit. - the failure handler (scope_fail) should be enforced to be noexcept - scope_exit should be default constructible (released by default, equivalent to moved-from state). That does not hold for scope_final, which is not releasable. - the active / released name fiasco should be adressed. At least provide operator bool(). - set_active should be removed. This is encouraging bad practice. - unique_resource should be moved outside the library. I consider that it belongs to a separate library, and i think it has some flaws in its design that should be addressed. Finally, many thanks to Andrey for proposing this library, and for quickly replying to the questions during the review. Regards, Julien

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[release] Master Branch is closed for ALL changes
by Marshall Clow 07 Dec '23

07 Dec '23

Please do not commit anything to the master branch. Other branches are always fine. The 1.84.0 release is scheduled for next Wednesday, 13-December. — Marshall

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[scope] Scope review starts on November 26th
by Дмитрий Архипов 07 Dec '23

07 Dec '23

Dear Boost community. The peer review of the proposed Boost.Scope will start on 26th of November and continue until December 5th. Boost.Scope is a small library implementing utilities defined in <experimental/scope> from C++ Extensions for Library Fundamentals v3 with a few extensions. Namely, the library contains: * A number of scope guards for various use cases. * A unique resource wrapper that automatically frees the resource on destruction. * Utilities for wrapping POSIX-like file descriptors in the unique resource wrapper. You can find the source code of the library at https://github.com/Lastique/scope and read the documentation at https://lastique.github.io/scope/libs/scope/doc/html/index.html. The library is header-only and thus it is fairly easy to try it out. In addition, the library can be used with Conan and vcpkg (see its README for instructions on how to do that). Finally, there's a single header version suitable for Compiler Explorer (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Lastique/scope/single-header/include/boos…) As the library is not domain-specific, everyone is very welcome to contribute a review either by sending it to the Boost mailing list, or me personally. In your review please state whether you recommend to reject or accept the library into Boost, and whether you suggest any conditions for acceptance. Thanks in advance for your time and effort! Dmitry Arkhipov, Staff Engineer at The C++ Alliance.

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The standard library is better documented
by Niilo Huovila 07 Dec '23

07 Dec '23

By better I mean cppreference.com. There's a page for pretty much everything in the standard library. Related pages are linked. The preconditions and behavior of functions are specified. Consequentially I come to Boost only when the standard library doesn't do enough. If you are going to compete with the standard library instead of just supplementing it, you need outstanding documentation.

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Master branch is now open for bug fixes
by Marshall Clow 06 Dec '23

06 Dec '23

The master branch is now open for bug fixes and documentation changes. Other changes by release manager permission, as described in https://github.com/boostorg/wiki/wiki/Releases%3A-Beta-Merge-Policy The next deadline: On December 6th, master closes for all changes. As always, the calendar is at https://www.boost.org/development/ — Marshall

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[release] Master Branch will close for the 1.84.0 release TOMORROW
by Marshall Clow 05 Dec '23

05 Dec '23

Don’t forget your release notes, too! — Marshall

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