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Mailman3
by Sam Darwin 04 Jun '24

04 Jun '24

Hi, Since the current Boost webserver and mailing list are quite out-of-date, it makes sense to consider the upgrade path. Mailman3 is a complete rewrite of the mailing list software. It's designed with multiple components: hyperkitty archives, postorius, and mailman-core. Dev instances have been installed. If you have any curiosity about testing mailman3 using your local email client, or sending feedback about the mailman3 experience, you can subscribe at https://lists.preview.boost.org. Send/receive emails. If you notice problems using mailman3, open an Issue at the Github repository cppalliance/boost-mailman. Now is the best time to discover issues, rather than after deployment. Lists at https://lists.preview.boost.org won't be maintained permanently. Any emails or accounts there will eventually be deleted. It's only a staging type environment. Working with the web developers we are planning to modify the appearance of the front-end UI, adding css styles, links to the boost website, and so on. Keep an eye on the test lists for updates. In the future when "going live", the idea will be to schedule (extended) planned downtime, and have a new server fully replace "lists.boost.org". Which specific boost mailing lists should be kept? It would be easier to avoid migrating all lists, if some of them are not active. Best Regards, Sam Darwin C++ Alliance

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Decimal Floating Point Library Beta
by Matt Borland 31 May '24

31 May '24

Hello, For the past year Chris Kormanyos and I have been working on a new library to implement IEEE 754 decimal floating point types. We are pleased to announce the library is now in beta, and can be found at: https://github.com/cppalliance/decimal, and the documentation is at: https://cppalliance.org/decimal/decimal.html First, what are Decimal Floating Point Numbers? They are floating point numbers where the significand is stored in base-10 (decimal) instead of base-2 (binary). This means that numbers can be represented exactly avoiding cases such as the famous 0.1 + 0.2 != 0.3: https://0.30000000000000004.com. The library provides types decimal32, decimal64, and decimal128 as specified in IEEE 754 and STL-like functionality. The library is header-only, has no dependencies, and only requires C++14. It provides most of the STL functionality that you are familiar with such as <cmath>, <cstdlib>, <charconv>, etc. We are proceeding as a beta right now rather than pursuing complete boost review as we are missing STL features such as C++17 special math, and believe we can continue to increase performance. We do intend to go through the review process at a later time. Please give the library a go, and let us know how we can make it better. We look forward to any and all feedback. If you use the Cpplang slack channel I am active (from the Central European Time zone) on both #boost and #boost-decimal. On a personal note as of today I have also moved from being employed half-time to full-time with the C++ Alliance. This affords me a greater opportunity to develop and maintain new and existing Boost libraries. Matt Borland —- C++ Alliance Staff Engineer

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NVCC and Unit Test Framework.
by Allen Sanderson 29 May '24

29 May '24

Hello, I am trying to sort out an odd crash on exit while using NVCC (via Kokkos-CUDA) and the Boost Unit Test Framework. Here my are data points: Kokkos-CUDA with the Boost test tool infrastructure - Crash Kokkos-HIP with the Boost test tool infrastructure - works Kokkos-Serial with the Boost test tool infrastructure - works Pure CUDA with the Boost test tool infrastructure - works Serial with the Boost test tool infrastructure - works Kokkos-CUDA alone (e.g. normal application) - works For the first case I have three scenarios (only used to high the Kokkos usage - the code does not crash in Kokkos::initialize), two of which crash: if(true) Kokkos::initialize(argc,argv); crash in CUDA - SEGFAULTif(false) Kokkos::initialize(argc,argv); crash in elsewhere - Subprocess aborted#if 0 Kokkos::initialize() #endif No crash For the first scenario the call stack is the following: #0 0x00001555521b5d9a in ?? () from ./cuda/12.2.0/lib64/libcudart.so.12 #1 0x00001555521b8c14 in ?? () from ./cuda/12.2.0/lib64/libcudart.so.12 #2 0x000015555219d882 in ?? () from ./cuda/12.2.0/lib64/libcudart.so.12 #3 0x00001555521a072b in ?? () from ./cuda/12.2.0/lib64/libcudart.so.12 #4 0x000015554b3b5797 in __cxa_finalize () from /lib64/libc.so.6 #5 0x0000155551301a87 in __do_global_dtors_aux () from build_kokkos_cuda/library/Operators/libOperators-g.so.5.5.0 #6 0x00007fffffffad10 in ?? () #7 0x000015555532dcee in _dl_fini () at dl-fini.c:141 For second, the call stack is quite deep after the call to __cxa_finalize () otherwise the first four (4-7) are the same. At this point the only culprit I can perhaps point at is nvcc I know at that previous versions of Boost and nvcc did not get along. And such, wondering if the usage is a corner case because I know of another project that is successfully using all three Boost, Kokkos, and CUDA. I am using Boost 1.85, Kokkos 4.3, and CUDA 12.2. Any insight or thoughts ? Our unit test work with Kokkos-HIP so able to validate results. Allen Sanderson SCI Institute University of Utah

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[release] Boost 1.85.0
by Marshall Clow 28 May '24

28 May '24

Release 1.85.0 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 two new libraries: * Boost.Charconv: A high quality implementation of <charconv> in C++11, from Matt Borland. * Boost.Scope: A collection of scope guard utilities and a unique_resource wrapper, from Andrey Semashev. The release also contains numerous enhancements and bug fixes for existing libraries. For details, including download links, see <http://www.boost.org/users/news/version_1.85.0> You can also download directly from: <https://boostorg.jfrog.io/artifactory/main/release/1.85.0/> 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. -- The Boost Release Team Marshall Clow, Glen Fernandes

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OSTIF Boost security audit report
by Andrey Semashev 24 May '24

24 May '24

Hi, Recently, a security audit of several Boost libraries has been conducted. The audited Boost version was 1.83.0. The report is now published here: https://ostif.org/boost-audit-complete/ https://ostif.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/OSTIF-Boost-Report-PT-v1.4.pdf In short, the following libraries were audited: - Boost.Beast (1 medium issue) - Boost.DLL (1 informational issue) - Boost.Date_Time - Boost.Filesystem - Boost.GIL - Boost.Graph (1 low and 1 informational issues) - Boost.JSON - Boost.Program_Options - Boost.Regex (3 low issues) - Boost.String_Algo - Boost.URL - Boost.UUID No critical or high severity issues were identified. Of the 7 identified issues, 4 are marked as closed, meaning the issues are fixed. The remaining 3 are open and listed in Boost.Beast (medium), Boost.DLL (informational) and Boost.Graph (informational). During audit, several fuzzing harnesses were developed and added to OSS-Fuzz: https://github.com/google/oss-fuzz/tree/master/projects/boost In the report, there were also a few general recommendations given to improve project security: - Monitor OSS-Fuzz Reports - Implement a Vulnerability Disclosure Process - Implement Supply-Chain Attack Countermeasures - Improve the Documentation with Security Mechanisms and Assumptions - Avoid the Abuse of Asserts Also, one general recommendation to Boost users: - Perform Strict Input Validation You can find more details in the report. I'd like to emphasize the "Implement Supply-Chain Attack Countermeasures" part, which basically comes down to signing git tags and release tarballs. I think, our release process is indeed not very reliable, let's say, which showed during the past few releases: - there was instance when different tarballs for the same RC were generated from different git revisions - git tags for the release were missing or pointing to a wrong git commit Also, release tarballs on GitHub don't have hashsums or signatures attached. https://github.com/boostorg/boost/issues/838 For tarballs on jfrog, thankfully, there are hashsums published in the release notes. Perhaps, we could also publish .sig files for all tarballs, and also publish the public key to verify the signature on the website. Also, under "Implement a Vulnerability Disclosure Process" it is suggested to use GitHub Security Advisories[1] as the mechanism for reporting security issues. I've never used this tool, but perhaps it is worth enabling for boostorg on GitHub. Emailing library maintainers privately might not be a very reliable mechanism for such reports, given that maintainers may become inactive. [1]: https://docs.github.com/en/code-security/security-advisories/working-with-r…

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Boost/CMake
by Robert Ramey 23 May '24

23 May '24

Anyone have first hand experience building/testing a boost library/application with CMake? I've found the github project for boost/Cmake. Can anyone point me to more useful information? Robert Ramey

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Re: [boost] modern logic classes
by g.peterhoff＠t-online.de 18 May '24

18 May '24

> At this point I'd like to know if it's possible to thread mathematically the N-bool problem and create a library for generic multidimensional bool that works with templates allowing to determine N at compile time. Because in the future we should have a 8-bool implementation, and so on... Theoretically, it would (probably) be possible to provide N-valued logics. But that is beyond my knowledge. bool3/bool4(Belnap) are still manageable. For N-valued logics N>4, mathematicians would have to be consulted (as I said: I am not one). If you are asking about such things, perhaps temporal logics could also be provided https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_logic. But that's where I completely drop out.

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modern logic classes
by g.peterhoff＠t-online.de 18 May '24

18 May '24

Hello, I would like to provide modern logic classes, please see https://github.com/boostorg/logic/issues/30 What are your opinions/comments on this? thx Gero

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2024 Q1 Transparency report
by Louis Tatta 16 May '24

16 May '24

Hello, Louis Tatta here, CEO of The C++ Alliance, Inc, a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to the support of C++. This is our Q1 2024 transparency report regarding our charitable work for the Boost C++ Library Collection. First, some background on our operations. The C++ Alliance seeks out highly talented and experienced C++ experts and hires them, usually full-time, so they can focus completely on their open-source projects. Our Staff Engineers maintain existing Boost libraries, write new Boost libraries, and contribute to other Boost projects. We employ IT experts full-time to maintain and improve the infrastructure which supports Boost, including the legacy web server, the Drone continuous integration servers, the scripts used to deploy GitHub Actions for Boost repositories, and the scripts which publish the Boost release. In addition, we provide on-demand technical support services for Boost authors and maintainers who have infrastructure-related problems. The Boost Mailing List continues to be the premier place for high-quality discussion of the Boost libraries and tangential C++ Standards related topics. The C++ Alliance supports the use of the mailing lists going forward. We are upgrading it to the latest Mailman version and building an optional web-based front-end allowing interaction using only a browser. We continue to operate the Official C++ Language Slack Workspace ( https://cpp.al/slack) which hosts the most popular interactive discussions regarding the Boost libraries. The C++ Alliance sponsors a paid plan to provide full history, video and audio conferences, collaboration tools, and unlimited document storage for seventeen dedicated Boost library channels and one main Boost discussion channel. Our largest project for Q1 2024 is the continuation of work on the new Boost website. The new site is a C++ social media portal with rich support for user-generated content and a powerful back-end which has visibility into the contributions made on GitHub and the release process. This allows us to deliver an elevated user experience with the hopes of attracting fresh talent to Boost. Also, note that the graphics on the website are hand-drawn by our contract artist and reflect our level of commitment to ensure that Boost, to put it simply, looks good. In Q1 2024 there were a total of two Boost Formal Reviews. One of the reviewed libraries is authored by a C++ Alliance Staff Engineer. None of the reviews were managed by C++ Alliance team members. Out of a total of sixteen submitted reviews for the quarter, eight were from C++ Alliance team members. This quarter, we increased our efforts to build Boost’s social media presence. There were a total of six messages from the @Boost_Libraries X (formerly Twitter) account, all submitted by C++ Alliance team members. Three of them contained artwork from Bob Ostrom commissioned by us. Messages containing images get three times more engagement than text-only messages. We believe that the X platform has unique strategic value for informing newer generations about the Boost value proposition. A total of $406,000 was spent on Boost-related contributions, broken down thusly (and rounded to the nearest thousand): Staff Engineers Compensation $317,000 Website Software Development $64,000 Server Hosting $25,000 During Q1 2024 we employed a total of 12 individuals to contribute to Boost. Here is a high-level summary of accomplishments: Sam Darwin (Chief Technical Officer) * Boost website maintenance and administration * Boost per-pull-request documentation previews * Boost Release Process development, maintenance, and administration * Boost Mailman services maintenance and upgrade * Boost GitHub Actions self-hosted runner project development * Boost Drone service administration and maintenance * New Boost website deployment, administration, and development Dmitry Arkhipov (Staff Engineer) * Boost.JSON maintenance Alan de Freitas (Staff Engineer) https://cppalliance.org/alan/2024/05/07/AlanQ1Update.html * Boost.URL maintenance * Mr. Docs project management (https://mrdocs.com) * GitHub actions support scripts for Boost CI (https://alandefreitas.github.io/cpp-actions/cpp-actions/index.html) Christian Mazakas (Staff Engineer) * Boost.Unordered evolution project * Boost.Buffers development (new library) * Boost.Http.Proto, Boost.Http.Io development (new libraries) Krystian Stasiowski (Staff Engineer) * Boost.StaticString maintenance * Mr. Docs Lead engineer (https://mrdocs.com/) * Clang/LLVM contributions Peter Turcan (Senior Technical Writer) * Boost User Guide development (new documentation) * Boost Contributor Guide (new documentation) * Boost Formal Reviews (new documentation) Matt Borland (Staff Engineer) * Boost.Decimal (proposed library) * Multi (https://github.com/correaa/Boost-Multi) review manager * Boost.Math maintenance Ruben Perez * Boost.PFR integration and maintenance work * Boost.MySQL maintenance (new, accepted library) * Boost.Charconv * User Guide, Contributor Guide contribution (new documentation) Mohammad Nejati (Staff Engineer) * Boost.Http.Proto and Boost.Buffers (new libraries) * Boost-Gecko (full-text site search) * Boost.Beast maintenance Fernando Pelliccioni (Staff Engineer) * Mr. Docs development (https://mrdocs.com/) Spencer Strickland (Senior Web Developer) * New website front-end and scripting Joaquin M Lopez Munoz (Staff Engineer) * Boost.Unordered evolution project lead * Boost.Bimap * Boost promotion and new website

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Fwd: shared_mutex lock() issue
by Max 15 May '24

15 May '24

Hi, It looks like threads-devel is abandoned I posted here. I have tried boost::shared_mutex and found an issue. It looks like it doesn't work as expected. The problem is following code: void lock() { #if defined BOOST_THREAD_PROVIDES_INTERRUPTIONS boost::this_thread::disable_interruption do_not_disturb; #endif boost::unique_lock<boost::mutex> lk(state_change); state.exclusive_waiting_blocked=true; exclusive_cond.wait(lk, boost::bind(&state_data::can_lock, boost::ref(state))); state.exclusive=true; } On lines: state.exclusive_waiting_blocked=true; exclusive_cond.wait(lk, boost::bind(&state_data::can_lock, boost::ref(state))); Here the state is changed and new lock_shared() waits because can_lock_shared returns false in this case. It works as I think it should be. The when "old" readers unlocks mutex the last one unlock_shared() executes void unlock_shared() { ... if (state.no_shared()) { if (state.upgrade) { ... } else { state.exclusive_waiting_blocked=false; //lk.unlock(); } release_waiters(); } where resets state.exclusive_waiting_blocked value. Then notify 2 condition variables(in release_waiters): 1 for readers and 1 for writers. If the writer doesn't win this race and one of the waited readers will be the first one, the writer runs state_data::can_lock and it of course returns false. Then the writer goes to sleep again. But exclusive_waiting_blocked is still false. So in the high pressure of readers, this writer never gets a chance to get control in this case anymore until all readers are gone. This bug was introduced in 1.67 version, before the changes the code was: while (state.shared_count || state.exclusive) { state.exclusive_waiting_blocked=true; exclusive_cond.wait(lk); } but it not the same as (because exclusive_waiting_blocked reassigned): state.exclusive_waiting_blocked=true; exclusive_cond.wait(lk, boost::bind(&state_data::can_lock, boost::ref(state))) Best Regards, Maxim

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