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Making Boost modular. IMPORTANT! URGENT! <insert-superlative-here>!
by René Ferdinand Rivera Morell 17 Jan '24

17 Jan '24

Dear fellow Boost authors, As some of you may have heard.. Some of us have been working on making it possible to fully consume Boost in a modular arrangement. First some FAQs about this: Q: What is a "modular arrangement"? A: It's when the libraries can be used, and hence built, without creating the monolithic headers, without needing the root build files, and without needing the libraries to be arranged in the usual root/libs/<name>. Q: Will a modular Boost remove the Boost release? A: No. The collection of libraries is still a single release. See recent discussions about this. Q: Will this change the testing? A: No, unless you want to. You will still be able to test the same non-modular way. But you could also test the modular way. Q: Will this require that we change the current Boost source structure? A: Yes. Unfortunately there is one restriction that adhering to a modular Boost requires. We would not allow sublibs. That is, that we can't support having libraries in root/libs/thing/<library> style locations. All libraries must be single libraries under the root/libs directory. Thankfully there's only a handful of such libraries. The root/libs/numeric/* group of libraries. Q: Why do we want a modular Boost? A: I'm not going to enumerate the reasons here. But let me just say.. That we've wanted a way to reduce, i.e. modularize, Boost since at least 19 years ago. When we added the "--without-<library>" build option to the root build file <https://github.com/boostorg/boost/blame/master/Jamroot#L107>. Now the work part.. Over the past year or so I've been making patches to the Boost build files, in my own repo, that cleans up the many, many, problems that make libraries depend on the current source structure. I've also made changes to B2 to make it easier/possible/automatic to deal with the new modular freedom. The B2 changes were naturally easy to put in since I control the repo and distribution. And the last bit of them shipped with the 1.83 release last Summer. But now I need to start pushing the changes to the many Boost repos to get this finished. A couple of weeks ago I started posting PRs to incrementally, and unobtrusively, make the changes to the Jamfiles. So far I have these: <https://github.com/boostorg/ublas/pull/189> <https://github.com/boostorg/interval/pull/38> I'm not sure how else to say this so.. PLEASE, PLEASE, merge those and future PRs ASAP. -- -- René Ferdinand Rivera Morell -- Don't Assume Anything -- No Supone Nada -- Robot Dreams - http://robot-dreams.net

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Boost downloads and JFrog
by Glen Fernandes 13 Jan '24

13 Jan '24

Rather than emails and Slack DMs, I would prefer we have this discussion on the mailing list. To summarize what I have repeated in the aforementioned channels: - Yes, our downloads are not working again because the JFrog account is again not active. - No, I cannot do anything about the JFrog account. - Yes, we can update the website to point to downloads hosted elsewhere. It is correct that JFrog does not charge us yet but our traffic has increased from 60TB/month to almost 200TB/month which is no longer supportable for free. We have limited time to find a solution. We are on borrowed time but as far as I know we still have time. the deactivation of the JFrog account in December 31 was not expected, and it was reinstated. Glen

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Request for comments: to_static_string
by Ruben Perez 13 Jan '24

13 Jan '24

Hi all, Since we will be reviewing Boost.CharConv shortly, and my development efforts in Boost.MySQL are currently requiring converting numbers to strings, I've been playing with the utilities we currently have to do so. I've found cases where I just needed to convert something to string, then pass the result to another function taking a string_view as parameter. The most efficient and correct way to do so is using to_chars (stack based, non-throwing, C++23 constexpr and locale-independent). But I still like the simplicity of std::to_string. Since I had some free time this weekend, I took a step forward and implemented a (deadly simple) wrapper around to_chars that looks like std::to_string, but has all the benefits of to_chars. I called this to_static_string. Repo is here: https://github.com/anarthal/to-static-string This is currently a prototype. I want to hear everyone's opinion on this - do you think this may be useful to any of you? I don't think it's big enough to even consider putting it into Boost (my idea is having it as a standalone lib). Any comments are welcome. Thanks, Ruben.

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[scope] Some random thoughts
by Andrzej Krzemienski 10 Jan '24

10 Jan '24

Hi All, Two observations from reading the docs. Why do I need a condition in scope_exit when I have a scope_fail? I recommend putting warning somewhere in the docs that while using scope guards you may inadvertently read an object after move: std::string checked(std::string name) { scope::scope_exit g{[&]{ std::clog << "checked " << name <<std::endl; }}; validate(name); return name; // name becomes moved-from } Regards, &rzej;

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Forthcoming Boost.Charconv review January 15th - 25th, 2024
by Christopher Kormanyos 09 Jan '24

09 Jan '24

Dear all, The review of Boost.Charconv by Matt Borland is scheduledfrom Monday, January 15th to January 25th, 2024. ----------------------------------------------------- About the library: Boost.Charconv provides a highly portable and efficient, C++11 implementation of <charconv>. The API containsfunctions compatible with <charconv>. Boost.Charconv can be highly useful for portability and efficiency. The standard library's <charconv> requires C++17 or higher. Currently only quite modern compilers such as GCC 11+ and MSVC 19.24+ support both integer and floating-point conversions in their implementation of <charconv>. If you are using either of those compilers, Boost.Charconv is at least as performant as <charconv>, and can be up to several times faster. If you are using an older compiler or a language standard lower than C++17, then there is no <charconv> available. In such cases, Boost.Charconv provides a highly-viable, portable and efficient header-only implementation. Boost.Charconv is a compiled library and does require a few other Boost libraries to run. The docs providedirections for how to consume with b2, vcpkg and Conanto facilitate this. Boost.Charconv fits into Boost stylistically and through itshigh quality, its Boost-like testing and its documentation. Boost.Charconv has been well-received and endorsed on the Boost-lists and is already being used for prototyping in several existing Boost libraries. Tool vendors have expressed interest in Boost.Charconv particularly due to its high performance and clarity of implementation details. docs: https://develop.charconv.cpp.al git: https://github.com/cppalliance/charconv --------------------------------------------------- Naturally, you need not wait until the review formally opens to start reviewing the Charconv library. Please always state in your review whether you think the library should be accepted as a Boost library! Please consider giving feedback on the following general topics: - 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 what compiler? 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? Christopher Kormanyos Boost.Charconv Review Manager ------------------------------

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boost.sqlite
by Klemens Morgenstern 06 Jan '24

06 Jan '24

I've written a boost.sqlite library last year mainly to experiment, but it has been a feature-complete C++ wrapper for a while. Hence I'd like to gauge interest to see if it's worth proposing for boost. It has more features than most C++ sqlite wrappers and uses boost-isms such as system.result, tag_invoke and boost.json. Code: https://github.com/klemens-morgenstern/sqlite Docs: https://klemens.dev/sqlite/

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Re: [boost] Interest in new parsing library?
by tobi＠die-loews.de 06 Jan '24

06 Jan '24

Zach Laine wrote: > - use approximately the same set of directives to influence the parse > (e.g. lexeme[]); It seems there is no directive like Spirit's no_case. Is there a way to match case-insensitivity?

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Google Summar of Code 2024 - Collecting Projects & Mentors! 📢
by Inbal Levi 05 Jan '24

05 Jan '24

Hello all! We would like to collect projects & mentors for the GSOC 2024 :) If you would like to volunteer as a mentor and/or have a proposal for a Boost project which you like to collect volunteers for, please fill in the proper tab: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_eUWRsXnhi_JwKZbHZsGQf3WNUESsAPE4lV… Once we have a list of proposed projects, we will upload them to GitHub. Thanks! Best regards, Inbal Levi ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ *Lead Software Engineer @ Millenium* Isocpp, Boost &"Hamakor" Non-Profits Board Member ISO C++ LEWG Chair & Israeli NB Chair C++Now Program Chair & CoreC++ Conference Organizer ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Recommendations for documentation authors
by Andrzej Krzemienski 04 Jan '24

04 Jan '24

Hi Boost Developers, And a happy New Year (at least for those who recognize the Gregorian calendar). While I consider improving the documentation quality of some Boost libraries, I wonder if there are any tool or workflow recommendations for the library authors regarding the documentation. I know we do not force any specific tool or format, so I am only asking about recommendations. I note that page https://www.preview.boost.org has at https://www.preview.boost.org/doc/contributor-guide/docs/documentation-guid… the following: > The format for documentation on the new website is AsciiDoc Syntax Quick Reference <https://docs.asciidoctor.org/asciidoc/latest/syntax-quick-reference/>. Should I treat it as a recommendation to use AsciiDoc? I note that quite a few new libraries choose it. I also see the advantage: you need no special tool for it: a simple web browser knows how to format it. But I found the documentation of libraries that use adoc to be uncomfortable to read. I do not know if this is the tool itself or maybe the correlation between the choice of the tool and the devotion to documentation quality, or maybe something else. It is quite subjective. The older libraries' documentation (using BoostDoc) seemed more friendly and easier to navigate. But to write and maintain such documentation is a challenge. Last year something broke in my pipeline (QuickDoc, xstlproc) and to this day I am not able to determine what it is. So, relying on too complex flows, which become obsolete over time, also doesn't seem like a good idea. I wonder if any of you have similar thoughts, and if you can recommend something for writing good quality and user friendly documentation. Regards, &rzej;

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[website][string_ref] Broken link to the library docs
by Andrey Semashev 02 Jan '24

02 Jan '24

Hi, In the library list for Boost 1.84: https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_84_0/ there is an entry for Boost.StringRef. However, that library was removed from libs/utility/meta/libraries.json. Or, more precisely, it was renamed to Boost.StringView (key: utility/string_view). The problem is that the StringRef entry in the above list has a broken link to the library docs, and the rename was supposed to fix it (by having an entry for StringView instead, linking to its docs). I'm not sure where StringRef comes from, but can it be removed? This has been reported a few times already: https://github.com/boostorg/website/issues/763 https://github.com/boostorg/utility/issues/105

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