[Boost-announce] Boost Review Wizard's Report: January 2006

From: Ronald Garcia (garcia_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-01-19 12:07:17

  Review Wizard Status Report for January 2006
  Tom Brinkman
  Ronald Garcia

  1) News
  2) Review Managers Needed
  3) Review Queue
  4) Libraries Under Development

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  1) News
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Happy New Year!  Here are some statistics regarding Boost Library
reviews in 2005:

  - 12 Libraries were reviewed
  - 8 Libraries were accepted
  - 1 Library (Function Types) was accepted pending a mini-review
  - 2 Libraries were rejected
  - 1 Library has yet to receive a final verdict (ASIO)

Policy Pointer has been removed from the review queue because the  
author has
stated that it is not quite ready.

We need review managers.  Please take a look at the list of libraries
in need of managers and check out their descriptions.  If you can
serve as review manager for any of them, send one of us an email.

Note:
  If you have any suggestions about how we could improve
  the Review Wizard's status report,
  please email "reportbase at gmail dot com"
           and "garcia at cs dot indiana dot edu".

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  2) Review Managers Needed
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

There are a few libraries in the review queue in need
of review managers. If you would like to volunteer to be a review
manager, please contact Ron or Tom.

The following libraries still require review managers:

Fusion
Shmem
Pimpl Pointer
Type Traits (modification)
Function Types

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  3) Review Queue
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Fixed Strings - January 19 2006 - January 28 2006

Intrusive Containers
Function Types (mini-re-review)
Shmem
Fusion
Pimpl Pointer
Type Traits (modification)

   Fixed Strings
    Author - Reece Dunn
    Review Manager - Harmut Kaiser

    Download:
     Boost Sandbox (http://boost-sandbox.sourceforge.net/) under  
fixed_string

    Description:
     The fixed string library provides buffer overrun protection for  
static
     sized strings (char s[ n ]). It provides a C-style string
     interface for compatibility with C code (for
     example, porting a C program to C++).
     There is also a std::string-style interface using a class based on
     flex_string by Andre Alexandrescu with a few limitations due to the
     non-resizable nature of the class.

  Intrusive Containers
    Author - Olaf Krzikalla
    Review Manager - to be determined

   Download:
    http://people.freenet.de/turtle++/intrusive.zip

   Description:
     While intrusive containers were and are widely used in C, they  
became
     more and more forgotten in the C++-world due to the presence of the
     standard containers, which don't support intrusive
     techniques. Boost.Intrusive not only reintroduces this technique to
     C++, but also encapsulates the implementation in STL-like
     interfaces. Hence anyone familiar with standard containers can use
     intrusive containers with ease.

   Function Types (mini-re-review)
     Author - Tobias Schwinger
     Review Manager - to be determined

     Download:
      http://boost-sandbox.sourceforge.net/vault/

     Description:
      This library provides a metaprogramming facility
       to classify, decompose and synthesize function-,
       function pointer-, function reference- and
       member function pointer types. For the purpose
       of this documentation, these types are
       collectively referred to as function
       types (this differs from the standard
       definition and redefines the term from
       a programmer's perspective to refer to
       the most common types that involve functions).

      The classes introduced by this library
       shall conform to the concepts of the
       Boost Metaprogramming library (MPL).

      The Function Types library enables the user to:
       * test an arbitrary type for
        being a function type of specified kind,
       * inspect properties of function types,
       * view and modify sub types of an
        encapsulated function type with
        MPL Sequence operations, and
       * synthesize function types.

      This library supports variadic functions and
       can be configured to support
       non-default calling conventions.

  Shmem
    Author - Ion Gaztanaga
    Review Manager - to be determined

    Download:
  Boost Sandbox Vault -> Memory  
(http://boost-sandbox.sourceforge.net/vault/index.php? 
direction=0&order=&directory=Memory)

      
http://ice.prohosting.com/newfunk/boost/libs/shmem/doc/html/index.html

    Description:
     Shmem offers tools to simplify shared memory usage in
     applications. These include shared memory creation/destruction and
     synchronization objects. It also implements dynamic allocation of
     portions of a shared memory segment and an easy way to construct C++
     objects in shared memory.

     Apart from this, Shmem implements a wide range of STL-like  
containers
     and allocators that can be safely placed in shared memory, helpful  
to
     implement complex shared memory data-bases and other efficient
     inter-process communications.

  Fusion
    Author - Joel de Guzman
    Review Manager - to be determined

    Download:
     http://spirit.sourceforge.net/dl_more/fusion_v2/

    Description:
     Fusion is a library of heterogenous containers and views and
     algorithms. A set of heterogenous containers (vector, list, set and
     map) is provided out of the box along with view classes that present
     various composable views over the data. The containers and views
     follow a common sequence concept with an underlying iterator concept
     that binds it all together, suitably making the algorithms fully
     generic over all sequence types.

     The architecture is somewhat modeled after MPL which in turn is
     modeled after STL. It is code-named "fusion" because the library is
     the "fusion" of compile time metaprogramming with runtime  
programming.

   Pimpl Pointer
     Author - Asger Mangaard
     Review Manager - to be determined

     Download:
      Boost Sandbox (http://boost-consulting.com/vault/) under pimpl_ptr.

     Description:
      The pimpl idiom is widely used to reduce compile times and disable
      code coupling. It does so by moving private parts of a class from  
the
      .hpp file to the .cpp file.
      However, it's implementation can be tricky, and with many pitfalls
      (especially regarding memory management).
      The pimpl_ptr library is a single header file, implementing a  
special
      policy based smart pointer to greately ease the implementation of  
the
      pimpl idiom.

  Type_Traits (modification)
          Author - Alexander Nasonov
          Review Manager - To be determined
        
          Download :
        You can download it from  
http://cpp-experiment.sourceforge.net/promote-20050917.tar.gz
        or browse it online  
http://cpp-experiment.sourceforge.net/promote-20050917/

        Description:
        Proposal to add promote, integral_promotion and  
floating_point_promotion
          class templates to type_traits library.

        Alexander tried it on different compilers with various success:
        GNU/Linux (gentoo-hardened): gcc 3.3 and 3.4, Intel 7, 8 and 9
        Windows: VC7 free compiler
        Sparc Solaris: Sun C++ 5.3 and 5.7

        See comments at the beginning of promote_enum_test.cpp for what is  
broken.
        http://cpp-experiment.sourceforge.net/promote-20050917/libs/ 
type_traits/test/promote_enum_test.cpp

        Alexander requests a fast-track review.
        

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  4) Libraries under development
  ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

   Property Tree
     Author - Marcin Kalicinski

     Download:
       Boost Sandbox Vault (http://boost-consulting.com/vault/)
       property_tree_rev3.zip

   Please let us know of any libraries you are currently
   developing that you intend to submit for review.

  Tom Brinkman
  Ronald Garcia
  Boost Review Wizards