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The state of modular Boost
by René Ferdinand Rivera Morell 16 Apr '25

16 Apr '25

Hello fellow developers, As you might remember many months ago I started asking library maintainers to merge the build (and sometimes source) changes needed to make it possible to consume Boost libraries in a modular way. At this point a good number of libraries have merged those PRs. And there have been a pair of Boost releases containing those changes. But there is still work to do. So far, we have: * 119 PRs merged so far! * 4 PRs needing work before they can be merged. * 1 PR that was merged to master but never merged to develop. * 45 PRs that can be merged immediately. What I'm asking now is for "forgiveness" as it were. The 45 PRs above are either PRs where the authors gave permission to the Boost github owners to review and merge. Or are for libraries that are effectively unmaintained (the authors did not respond to the PR or to the various requests for how to manage the changes, and haven't seen changes in them for some years). And the recent changes I made to the PRs was not with the build changes. But instead to fix the unmaintained CI of the libraries as they otherwise just did not work. What I want it for the github org owners to go ahead and merge these 45 PRs: https://github.com/users/grafikrobot/projects/1/views/7 Thank you. -- -- René Ferdinand Rivera Morell -- Don't Assume Anything -- No Supongas Nada -- Robot Dreams - http://robot-dreams.net

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[OpenMethod] Boost.OpenMethod review scheduled
by Дмитрий Архипов 14 Apr '25

14 Apr '25

The review for the proposed Boost.OpenMethod library by Jean-Louis Leroy is scheduled to take place from April 28 to May 07. OpenMethods solve the Expression Problem by making it possible to define free virtual functions, i.e. virtual functions that exist outside of a class The library repository is here: https://github.com/jll63/Boost.OpenMethod. The documentation is here: https://jll63.github.io/Boost.OpenMethod.

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Pretty printer module
by Дмитрий Архипов 14 Apr '25

14 Apr '25

Recently Niall Douglas posted about his idea to embed GDB pretty printers into binaries using a header. At the time I was thinking about a good way to deploy pretty printers for JSON that facilitates their autoloading. After Niall's post I experimented a little bit more, and I came to the conclusion that indeed nothing beats embedding via a C++ header in terms of convenience. At the same time I was also thinking about testing that pretty printers do in fact work. Given that pretty printers (usually) are implemented as a Python module, it initially looked like one could just run a Python program and import GDB Python modules. But actually you cannot. It turns out, though, you can run a Python script with GDB as the interpreter. After several iterations I arrived at this setup: https://github.com/boostorg/json/blob/develop/test/printers.cpp. A script converts this file into a Python script that uses GDB to break on certain lines and check if a particular expression produces a particular output when printed. While doing all this I thought that most of this work can be useful to other libraries. So, I moved the reusable parts into a separate directory (https://github.com/boostorg/json/tree/develop/pretty_printers) and added both a b2 module, and a CMake module. For B2. Importing: https://github.com/boostorg/json/blob/develop/build.jam#L8-L9 https://github.com/boostorg/json/blob/develop/build/Jamfile#L13 (Re)generating the header: https://github.com/boostorg/json/blob/develop/build/Jamfile#L88-L95 Testing: https://github.com/boostorg/json/blob/develop/test/Jamfile#L96-L101 For CMake: Importing: https://github.com/boostorg/json/blob/develop/CMakeLists.txt#L54-L55 (Re)generating the header: https://github.com/boostorg/json/blob/develop/CMakeLists.txt#L56-L63 Testing: https://github.com/boostorg/json/blob/develop/test/CMakeLists.txt#L80-L88 My questions to the community: do you find this useful? Would you use it in your Boost or non-Boost library? If you do, the module should be moved to tools rather than stay in libs/json.

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[Release] The master branch is now open
by Marshall Clow 13 Apr '25

13 Apr '25

Thanks to everyone for their patience. The next release cycle will begin in late June. — The release managers.

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boost::python and Python 3.12
by Tom Kacvinsky 13 Apr '25

13 Apr '25

While working on a project to upgrade an embedded Python interpreter (to Python 3.12), which uses boost::python, I noticed the structs from the Python C API now have more members and those extra struct members were not populated in the boost::python code. In particular I was bit by the enum module crashing our application startup. I noticed this with boost 1.78, but I found the same problematic code in the release that was current as of two months ago (1.87.0, I think). I got things to compile and run, but my approach was to just make the code Python 3.12 compliant. I can prepare a patch that has the appropriate macro guards for populating the structs as they relate to different Python versions. I'll read the boost developers guide and follow the necessary steps to submit a fix. Regards, Tom

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[release] Boost 1.88.0
by Marshall Clow 13 Apr '25

13 Apr '25

Release 1.88.0 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. The release contains two new libraries: * Hash2: An extensible hashing framework, from Peter Dimov and Christian Mazakas. * MQTT5: MQTT5 client library built on top of Boost.Asio, from Ivica Siladić, Bruno Iljazović, and Korina Šimičević. as well as numerous enhancements and bug fixes for existing libraries. For details, including download links, see <http://www.boost.org/users/news/version_1.88.0> You can also download directly from: <https://archives.boost.io/release/1.88.0/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, Ion Ion Gaztañaga

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Git Debug Branch
by Robert Ramey 11 Apr '25

11 Apr '25

Sometime ago someone made the case that we should drop the Debug branch in the git storage for the libraries. I found the case pretty convincing and endorsed the change. However, it seems that the idea was not well received and the idea was not adopted. I hope my endorsement wasn't responsable for it's being dismissed. Now it seems that the idea HAS been adopted. I've found in both the libraries I maintain, some "maintainers" check into the master branch directly from a feature branch used for debugging. This was kind of problematic as the debug and master branch were no longer easily understood by doing a diff. Worse, other "maintainers" check into the debug branch in the traditional way leaving the merge to master as a separate operation in the traditional manner. My custom has been to merger to master just before the next release. I only dip into maintenance occasionally, so I don't remember all the details and I have to spend a lot of time looking at who did what. So, I'm announcing that I am unilaterally declaring soon I will be leaving the debug branch aside and not use it in the future. Those who have the authority to directly make changes in these libraries (as opposed do making a merge request) should know that any pushes to the debug branch will be lost. Robert Ramey

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is it possible to run the tests on a different platform without the build-environment?
by Dennis Luehring 11 Apr '25

11 Apr '25

im building boost on a Win11 and run my boost-libs using application on an different/customized Win10 platform normally im running at least once the tests of the used libs when building boost cd boost-root\libs\asio\test b2 test the tests getting build and runned - nice and perfect but is there a way to run the builded tests on my other platform without installed development tools? its a very small reduced pseudo embedded Win 10 system

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question re boost instalation
by Robert Ramey 11 Apr '25

11 Apr '25

I'm following the "getting started" part of the boost documentation. When I get to here - I get some message I don't understand. Anyone have any ideas? Robert Ramey $b2 install --prefix=bin/osx /Users/robertramey/WorkingProjects/modular-boost/tools/build/src/build/property.jam:363: in validate1 from module property error: Invalid property '<valgrind>on': unknown feature 'valgrind'. /Users/robertramey/WorkingProjects/modular-boost/tools/build/src/build/property.jam:372: in property.validate from module property /Users/robertramey/WorkingProjects/modular-boost/tools/build/src/tools/features/variant-feature.jam:102: in variant from module variant-feature libs/beast/Jamfile:44: in modules.load from module Jamfile</Users/robertramey/WorkingProjects/modular-boost/libs/beast> /Users/robertramey/WorkingProjects/modular-boost/tools/build/src/build/project.jam:544: in load-jamfile from module project /Users/robertramey/WorkingProjects/modular-boost/tools/build/src/build/project.jam:68: in project.load from module project Jamroot:450: in modules.load from module Jamfile</Users/robertramey/WorkingProjects/modular-boost> /Users/robertramey/WorkingProjects/modular-boost/tools/build/src/build/project.jam:544: in load-jamfile from module project /Users/robertramey/WorkingProjects/modular-boost/tools/build/src/build/project.jam:68: in load from module project /Users/robertramey/WorkingProjects/modular-boost/tools/build/src/build/project.jam:201: in project.find from module project /Users/robertramey/WorkingProjects/modular-boost/tools/build/src/build-system.jam:618: in module scope from module build-system $

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is is possible to downsize the boost installation folder
by Dennis Luehring 10 Apr '25

10 Apr '25

im building boost 1.87 and i only need thread+asio building: cd /home/test wget https://archives.boost.io/release/1.87.0/source/boost_1_87_0.tar.bz2 tar -xf boost_1_87_0.tar.bz2 cd boost_1_87_0 ./bootstrap.sh --prefix=/home/test/boost_1_87_0_installed ./b2 variant=release --with-thread install the resulting install folder /home/test/boost_1_87_0_installed lib folder is ~500 KB include is ~142 MB is it possible to only have the needed library includes in the include folder?

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