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Review Wizard Status Report for August 2014
by Ron Garcia 02 Sep '14

02 Sep '14

============================================== Review Wizard Status Report for August 2014 ============================================== News ==== 1. Fiber Accepted Provisionally. January 2014. 2. Align Accepted. April 2014. 3. TypeIndex Accepted. May 2014. 4. Convert Accepted. June 2014. 5. Boost 1.56 Released -- New Libraries: Align, TypeIndex Open Issues =========== The following libraries have review managers, but have not yet been scheduled for review: * Range Extensions - added May 2012; review manager: Neil Groves. The following libraries have been accepted to Boost, but have not yet been integrated into Boost Git: * Contract - accepted September 2012; author: Lorenzo Caminiti. The following libraries have been accepted and submitted to Boost Git, but have not yet appeared in a release: * Convert - accepted June 2014; author: Vladimir Batov. The following libraries have been accepted provisionally to Boost, but have not been submitted for mini-review and full acceptance: * Fiber - accepted provisionally January 2014; author Oliver Kowalke. General Announcements ===================== As always, we need experienced review managers. Please take a look at the list of libraries in need of managers and check out their descriptions. In general review managers are active boost participants, including library contributors, infrastructure contributors, and other mailing list participants with a substantial track record of constructive participation. If you can serve as review manager for any of them, email Ron Garcia or John Phillips, "rxg at cs dot ubc dot ca" and "johnphillipsithica at gmail dot com" respectively. We are also suffering from a lack of reviewers. While we all understand time pressures and the need to complete paying work, the strength of Boost is based on the detailed and informed reviews submitted by you. If you are interested in reviewing a library but won't have time during the review period, you can always prepare your review ahead of time. No rule says you can only work on a review during the review period. A link to this report will be posted to www.boost.org. If you would like us to make any modifications or additions to this report, please email Ron or John. The review schedule is an unordered list of the libraries awaiting review. As such, any library on the schedule can be reviewed once the developer is ready, a review manager has been secured, and the manager, developer, and wizards agree on a date to schedule the review. Review Schedule =============== * Join (M) * Sorting (M) * Quaternions, Vectors, Matrices (M) * Block Pointer (M) * Singularity (M) * Extended Complex Numbers (M) * Metaparse (M) * Boost.Range Extensions * Nowide (M) * Array (M) * STL Extensions (M) * Countertree (M) * Process (M) * Asynchronous File I/O (M) * Application (M) * Edit Distance (M) * Mixin (M) ``(M)`` marks libraries that need review managers. -------------------- Join ---- :Author: Yigong Liu :Review Manager: Needed :Download: http://channel.sourceforge.net/ :Description: Join is an asynchronous, message based C++ concurrency library based on join calculus. It is applicable both to multi-threaded applications and to the orchestration of asynchronous, event-based applications. It follows Comega's design and implementation and builds with Boost facilities. It provides a high level concurrency API with asynchronous methods, synchronous methods, and chords which are "join-patterns" defining the synchronization, asynchrony, and concurrency. Sorting ------- :Author: Steven Ross :Review Manager: Needed :Download: https://github.com/boost-vault/Sorting :Description: A grouping of 3 templated hybrid radix/comparison-based sorting algorithms that provide superior worst-case and average-case performance to std::sort: integer_sort, which sorts fixed-size data types that support a rightshift (default of >>) and a comparison (default of <) operator. float_sort, which sorts standard floating-point numbers by safely casting them to integers. string_sort, which sorts variable-length data types, and is optimized for 8-bit character strings. All 3 algorithms have O(n(k/s + s)) runtime where k is the number of bits in the data type and s is a constant, and limited memory overhead (in the kB for realistic inputs). In testing, integer_sort varies from 35% faster to 2X as fast as std::sort, depending on processor, compiler optimizations, and data distribution. float_sort is roughly 70% faster than std::sort. string_sort is roughly 2X as fast as std::sort. Quaternions, Vectors, Matrices ------------------------------ :Author: Emil Dotchevski :Review Manager: Needed :Download: http://www.revergestudios.com/boost-qvm/ :Description: QVM defines a set of generic functions and operator overloads for working with quaternions, vectors and matrices of static size. The library also defines vector and matrix data types, however it allows users to introduce their own types by specializing the q_traits, v_traits and m_traits templates. Block Pointer ------------- :Author: Phil Bouchard :Review Manager: Needed :Download: https://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/sandbox/block_ptr/ :Description: Deterministic memory manager of constant complexity capable of handling cyclic collections. Singularity ----------- :Author: Ben Robinson :Review Manager: Needed :Download: https://github.com/cppmaven/Singularity :Description: The Singularity Design Pattern allows you to restrict any class to a single instance. Unlike the infamous Singleton, Singularity gives you direct control over the lifetime of the object, does not require you to grant global access to the object, nor does it limit you to the default constructor for that object. Extended Complex Numbers ------------------------ :Author: Matthieu Schaller :Review Manager: Needed :Download: http://code.google.com/p/cpp-imaginary-numbers/ :Description: The library is an extension of the std::complex class addressing two issues: 1. The standard does not guaranty the behaviour of the complex class if instantiated with types other than float/double/long double. 2. Some calculation where pure imaginary numbers (i.e. multiples of sqrt(-1)) appear are unnecessarily slowed down due to the lack of support for these numbers. The code I submit contains two interleaved classes boost::complex and boost::imaginary which can be instantiated with any type T provided T overloads the usual arithmetic operators and some basic (real) mathematical functions depending on which complex function will be used. It is thus an extended version of Thorsten Ottosen's n1869 proposal (http://www.open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/WG21/docs/papers/2005/n1869.html) Metaparse --------- :Author: Abel Sinkovics :Review Manager: Needed :Download: http://abel.web.elte.hu/metaparse/metaparse.zip :Description: Metaparse is a library for constructing parsers parsing at compile-time based on template metaprogramming. The parsers built with the library take boost::mpl::strings as input and can produce - types - objects (types with public static members) - callable C++ functions (types with public static method) - template metafunction classes as output (based on the input being parsed). On compilers supporting constexpr the library provides the following syntactic sugar for writing the input of the parsers: BOOST_STRING("this is a string") The library can be used for implementing DSLs in C++, including DSLs making C++ template metaprogramming easier (see examples). Range Extensions ---------------- :Author: Akira Takahashi :Review Manager: Neil Groves :Download: https://github.com/faithandbrave/OvenToBoost :Description: This project adds some features of the Oven Range Library to Boost.Range. Features: - Additional Range Adaptors (taken, taken_while, dropped, dropped_while, elements, elements_key, memoized, outdirected) - Extensions for using Lambda (regular function, regular operator) - Infinite Range (iteration function) - and additional range utilities. Nowide ------ :Author: Artyom Beilis :Review Manager: Needed :Download: http://cppcms.com/files/nowide/ :Description: This library makes cross platform Unicode aware programming easier. It provides an implementation of standard C and C++ library functions, such that their inputs are UTF-8 aware on Windows without requiring to use Wide API. Array ----- :Author: Brian Smith :Review Manager: Needed :Download: https://github.com/BrianJSmith/Array :Description: The array class is a C++11 compatible implementation of static multidimensional arrays. STL Extensions -------------- :Author: Vadim Stadnik :Review Manager: Needed :Download: https://github.com/vstadnik/stl_ext_adv_review :Description: The proposed library [stl_ext_adv] offers augmented array based B+ trees and STL containers that support the interfaces of the C++03 sequences and associative containers. The library offers a number of extensions and performance improvements that are not available in C++03 and C++11 standard containers. Countertree ----------- :Author: Francisco Jose Tapia :Review Manager: Needed :Download: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8437476/works/countertree_code_doc.zip :Description: This library is an implementation of a binary red-black counter tree. This tree have an additional counter in each leaf. This permit the access to the elements by the position, like in a vector. It is a random access container with random access iterators. COUNTERTREE This kind of trees have an additional counter in each leaf. This permit the access to the elements by the position, like in a vector. It is a random access container with random access iterators. With unordered information we have a vector with the same speed inserting and deleting in any position (O(log N)). With ordered information, we have the classes set, multiset, map and multimap, with identical interface than the STL classes, with the plus of access to the elements by position, like in a vector. The iterators are random access , and you can subtract them. SUBALLOCATOR The suballocator is a layer between the allocator and the data structures, compatible with any allocator with the STL definition. The suballocator replace to the allocator in the allocation of equal size elements. It provides speed, return the unused memory and decrease the memory used by the program and improve the cache performance due to the data locality improvement ( 30% of improvement of speed respect the std::allocator with GCC 4.7) Process ------- :Author: Boris Schaeling :Review Manager: Needed :Download: http://www.highscore.de/boost/process0.5/process.zip :Description: Boost.Process is a library to manage system processes. It can be used to: * create child processes * setup streams for child processes * communicate with child processes through streams (synchronously or asynchronously) * wait for processes to exit (synchronously or asynchronously) * terminate processes Asynchronous File I/O --------------------- :Author: Niall Douglas and Paul Kirth :Review Manager: Needed :Download: https://github.com/BoostGSoC/boost.afio/archive/boost-peer-review.tar.gz :Description: Boost.AFIO is a linear scalable, batch, chainable, asynchronous closure execution engine with an almost wait free implementation extending Boost.ASIO and Boost.Thread specialised as a portable asynchronous file i/o implementation library. Implementation of this first version has been kept as simple as possible (~ 1000 active LOC) at the cost of some performance, though with a good compiler you can expect 25-50% of the performance of using raw Boost.ASIO. Application ----------- :Author: Renato Tegon Forti :Review Manager: Needed :Download: https://github.com/retf/Boost.Application :Documentation: http://www.dokfile.com/appbeta4/docs/libs/application/doc/html/index.html :Description: Application provides an application environment, or start point to any people that want a basic infrastructure to build an system application on Windows or Unix Variants (e.g. Linux, MacOS). Application uses behaviours modeled using 'aspects' concept proposed by 'Vicente J. Botet Escriba', that allow easy extension and customization of library components. The application modes uses these components internally to achieve the user desirable behaviours. Application provide many useful ready-to-use features, e.g: * Run application as Windows Service; * Run application as UNIX/POSIX Daemon; * Plugin extension system; * Process(executable) Single instance Instantiation support; * Application SIGNAL/Callbacks customization; * Windows Service Setup feature; * And many others. Edit Distance ------------- :Author: Erik Erlandson :Review Manager: Needed :Download: https://github.com/erikerlandson/algorithm/tree/edit_distance/sequence :Description: The edit distance is the length of the shortest (or least-cost) edit script from one sequence to another, where an edit script is defined as a sequence of insertion, deletion and (optionally) substitution operations. The function implementing the edit distance is named edit_distance. This function will return the edit distance between two sequences, where sequences may be any valid range object supporting forward iteration. The edit_distance function will also, if requested, return the edit script. Mixin ----- :Author: Borislav Stanimirov :Download: https://github.com/iboB/boost.mixin :Documentation: http://ibob.github.io/boost.mixin/ :Review Manager: Needed :Description: Boost.Mixin is a library that allows the composition and modifications of polymorphic types at run time. Types and objects are constructed out of building blocks called mixins. The library uses the type boost::mixin::object as a placeholder, whose instances can be extended with existing classes (mixins), thus providing a particular instance with the functionality of all those types. Accessing the newly formed type's interface is made through messages: stand-alone functions generated by the library, which can be thought of as methods. This is given while also having full abstraction between the interface and the definition of types. An existing feature in another language similar to Boost.Mixin and also an inspiration for the library are the mixins in Ruby. The library also has similarities with the pattern entity-component-system. Libraries under development =========================== See http://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/wiki/LibrariesUnderConstruction for a current listing of libraries under development.

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[quickbook] miss-generated headings?
by John Maddock 01 Sep '14

01 Sep '14

I have a problem with quickbook code that has [h6 ...] elements in it - these end up being larger in both html and pdf output than [h5 ] blocks which is not so good :-( From what I can tell, [h5 ] actually produces html <h6> and [h6 ] produces html <h5>. BTW I realise [h6 ] is a lot of nesting, but the current stylesheet make <h6> quite a bit larger than surrounding text, so <h7> seems to be not beyond the realms of possibility? Thanks, John.

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[build] b2 headers don't work for sublibs
by Andrey Semashev 01 Sep '14

01 Sep '14

Hi, I'm trying to move some headers of Boost.MPL to a sublib Boost.MPL.Core. I've reorganized the repository as follows: libs mpl book core include boost <- here and below are core headers test index.html doc example include boost <- here and below are the rest headers meta preprocessed test .git .gitattributes README.md index.html sublibs The problem is when I run 'b2 headers' the command creates a symlink boost/mpl pointing to libs/mpl/include/boost/mpl, which leaves out all headers from libs/mpl/core/include/boost/mpl. How do I instruct Boost.Build to create links to the core headers?

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Re: [boost] [graph] strong_components & depth_first_visit feature proposal
by Jeremiah Willcock 31 Aug '14

31 Aug '14

On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 2:39 AM EDT Alexander Lauser wrote: >> * Another minor question: Why are not all events of a >> DFS-visitor optional (like finish_edge is)? I think this would make >> implementing a partial DFS-visitors easier (by not having to derive from >> dfs_visitor in order to provide events that one is not interested in). >> >> Have you tried deriving from default_dfs_visitor? > >Yes, but why only make finish_edge optional? I think it would make >user-code (slightly) clearer if all events were optional. It's no big >deal, of course, and that's why it's a minor question. > >Alex > > >PS: For the background, I'm quite new to Boost and for me it is somewhat >arbitrary that everything is mandatory but finish_edge. The reason, >however, seems to be historical: I recently saw that, at least in Boost >version <= 1.39, there was no finish_edge-event. That is why it is (or at least is trying to be) optional. Visitors from before that event was added would become incorrect if it was not optional, leading to compatibility problems. Making all of the events optional would be possible as long as Boost.TTI could detect all of the signatures that are in use for them currently. -- Jeremiah Willcock

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[vmd] Library review
by Matt Calabrese 31 Aug '14

31 Aug '14

Design: As a set of utility macros, there is not too much to be said. The macros that are presented are generally useful and fill some needs that are encountered when doing preprocessor metaprogramming. Implementation: I admittedly haven't examined the implementation itself too closely, but I have used the library in practice with both clang and gcc without problems on a considerably large preprocessor project (~50k lines preprocessor programming), albeit a few years ago. Documentation: I read through the entirety of the documentation and it is fairly good at describing some of the problems faced when doing preprocessor metaprogramming, such as the lack of truly being able to detect emptiness and the implementation weaknesses of certain non-compliant preprocessors. That said, I feel like it focuses a lot on the hairiness of the preprocessor and not enough on the functionality that the library itself provides. For example, the tuple-related macros (being able to deal with something that is a tuple with more tokens after the tuple, for instance) are very useful in preprocessor metaprogramming, but the documentation doesn't do much to explain why. As well, while what to expect from expansion of the macros is described, examples are absent. To be more specific, take these two bits of the documentation: BOOST_VMD_BEGIN_TUPLE http://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eldiener/va… BOOST_VMD_AFTER_TUPLE http://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eldiener/va… Although the macros are described, a set of examples could go a long way. For instance something as simple as the following can go quite a long way: BOOST_VMD_AFTER_TUPLE( (int a, float b, char c) const ) // yields: const The above both more directly shows what you can expect from the macro and also may better explain the usefulness. To people experienced with [ab]using the preprocessor, why you want to use these macros is often obvious, but most people are not very familiar with preprocessor metaprogramming and I think the docs sort of need to be aware of that. Examples and a motivation explaining why the particular set of macros provided is important. Perhaps what might be best is to start the documentation with a tutorial that takes the user through the uses that come up in practice when I.E. designing a simple EDSL through preprocessor metaprogramming. Usage: Years ago I used the VMD library when developing [not a boost lib] Boost.Generic. Prior to VMD being around, I had hand-rolled much of the functionality into Boost.Generic that VMD provides, though I very quickly stopped caring about VC++ support. When VMD was in the boost sandbox, I swapped out everything I could with invocations to VMD's macros and it freed me of the maintenance burden of trying to support noncompliant compilers. Needless to say, VMD "just worked" and I find it likely that other people who use the preprocessor in these ways would find VMD just as useful as I have. For my project I was testing with both GCC and Clang and had no problems with anything that VMD provided. Domain familiarity: I've done an embarrassingly large amount of preprocessor metaprogramming and, again, I find this library useful. ===== Overall, I'd say that this library should make it into boost. The biggest thing that it lacks is motivation in documentation, lack of examples, and a practical tutorial, but these should be able to be added before the library would make it into a release. Other than that, I do think there might be some way to roll this into Boost.Preprocessor, but I have no strong feelings on the matter and it's really up to Paul. So this a +1 from me, as long as the documentation gets some improvement. -- -Matt Calabrese

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[conceptcheck] Document using namespace boost.
by Mostafa 31 Aug '14

31 Aug '14

I'm not unfamiliar with Boost.ConceptCheck, though I've used it very infrequently. So, like all familiar but infrequently used libraries I skip to the examples to jog my memory as to their usage. Invariably, if the examples or the tutorial are not complete then I end up repeating past mistakes. This is the case with Boost.ConceptCheck library. All the examples on this page: http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_56_0/libs/concept_check/using_concept_check… (which is the quick 5 minute introduction on how to use ConceptCheck) assume some previous "using namespace boost;" declaration, yet that is not documented on that particular page or any previous page. Can this be fixed to save new and infrequent users of the library unneeded head-scratching and wasted time? (I can open a trac ticket if that helps.) Thanks.

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[config] BOOST_NO_CXX11_HDR_FUNCTIONAL and VC++10
by Edward Diener 31 Aug '14

31 Aug '14

While BOOST_NO_CXX11_HDR_FUNCTIONAL is not defined for VC++10 my tests show that std::ref in VC++10 is broken in a very simple case. Here is the code for that case: // test_vc10_refwrapper.cpp #include <functional> class p_functor_class_char { public: p_functor_class_char() : data('A') {} char operator()() { return data; } private: char data; }; void main() { p_functor_class_char pfcc; std::function<char ()> sf(std::ref(pfcc)); } which for VC++10 gives: > c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\INCLUDE\xxcallobj(13) : error C2440: 'return' : cannot convert from 'void' to 'char' > Expressions of type void cannot be converted to other types > c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\INCLUDE\xxfunction(65) : see reference to function template instantiation '_Ret std::tr1::_Callable_obj<_Ty>::_ApplyX<_Rx>(void)' being compiled > with > [ > _Ret=char, > _Ty=std::tr1::reference_wrapper<p_functor_class_char>, > _Rx=char > ] > c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\INCLUDE\xxfunction(64) : while compiling class template member function 'char std::tr1::_Impl_no_alloc0<_Callable,_Rx>::_Do_call(void)' > with > [ > _Callable=_MyWrapper, > _Rx=char > ] > c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\INCLUDE\xxfunction(386) : see reference to class template instantiation 'std::tr1::_Impl_no_alloc0<_Callable,_Rx>' being compiled > with > [ > _Callable=_MyWrapper, > _Rx=char > ] > c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\INCLUDE\xxfunction(369) : see reference to function template instantiation 'void std::tr1::_Function_impl0<_Ret>::_Reset0o<_Myimpl,_Fty,std::allocator<_Ty>>(_Fty,_Alloc)' being compiled > with > [ > _Ret=char, > _Fty=std::tr1::reference_wrapper<p_functor_class_char>, > _Ty=std::tr1::_Function_impl0<char>, > _Alloc=std::allocator<std::tr1::_Function_impl0<char>> > ] > c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\INCLUDE\functional(126) : see reference to function template instantiation 'void std::tr1::_Function_impl0<_Ret>::_Reset<std::tr1::reference_wrapper<_Ty>>(_Fty)' being compiled > with > [ > _Ret=char, > _Ty=p_functor_class_char, > _Fty=std::tr1::reference_wrapper<p_functor_class_char> > ] > test_vc10_refwrapper.cpp(15) : see reference to function template instantiation 'std::tr1::function<_Fty>::function<p_functor_class_char>(std::tr1::reference_wrapper<_Ty>)' being compiled > with > [ > _Fty=char (void), > _Ty=p_functor_class_char > ] With VC++11 and VC++12 this has been fixed. Using boost::function and boost::ref there are no problems in VC++10. I realize that this might not really be an issue in Boost but I was still wondering if this is a known problem with any Boost developers. I ran into it during tests, where I was letting BOOST_NO_CXX11_HDR_FUNCTIONAL determine whether to use std or boost versions of the functionality in the C++11 <functional> header.

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[review] [vmd] Last day of review period - reviewers needed
by Steven Watanabe 30 Aug '14

30 Aug '14

AMDG The limited amount of feedback has been generally positive, but I haven't seen any full reviews, yet. If anyone is planning to review the library, please let me know. In Christ, Steven Watanabe

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Trac getting spammed
by John Maddock 30 Aug '14

30 Aug '14

We seem to be getting more than the usual amount of spam on the Trac recently, I've deleted quite a few, but I bet there are others I haven't seen. Latest is https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/10358 Anyone any ideas for blocking these guys? Thanks, John.

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Problem with BOOST_NO_CXX11_VARIADIC_TEMPLATES in gcc.hpp
by Richard Hadsell 30 Aug '14

30 Aug '14

I think I found a problem in config/compiler/gcc.hpp in Boost 1.56.0. I was trying to come up with a workaround for a bug having to do with variadic templates, when compiling with g++ 4.5.1 (on Linux Fedora 14). Modifying line 160 to turn on BOOST_NO_CXX11_VARIADIC_TEMPLATES for g++ versions earlier than 4.7 had not effect. I discovered that the version test in line 160 has no effect, because it is in a block (lines 153-164) that only pertains to g++ 4.2 or earlier, if compiled with -std=c++0x. The block for versions 4.3 and later (lines 145-151) always define BOOST_HAS_VARIADIC_TMPL and never BOOST_NO_CXX11_VARIADIC_TEMPLATES. I think that is a mistake, at least partially, because proposal N2555 is only supported in version 4.4. At any rate, someone should look at these lines and make some sense of them. The GCC support table shows general support for variadic templates in 4.3 and support for N2555 (with a long name) in 4.4. Furthermore, the bug that produces a message like this: "sorry, unimplemented: cannot expand 'Args ...' into a fixed-length argument list" was only fixed in g++ 4.7.0 (according to a bug report). That issue could also use a guard macro, as was done in one of the boost libraries ( BOOST_CONTAINER_UNIMPLEMENTED_PACK_EXPANSION_TO_FIXED_LIST). -- Dick Hadsell 203-992-6320 Fax: 203-992-6001 Reply-to: hadsell(a)blueskystudios.com Blue Sky Studioshttp://www.blueskystudios.com 1 American Lane, Greenwich, CT 06831-2560

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