[Boost-users] Boost 1.34.0 Beta released

From: Thomas Witt (witt_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-04-26 19:13:42

The first beta of what will become version 1.34.0 is now
available from http://www.boost.org.

New Libraries

     * Foreach Library:
         BOOST_FOREACH macro for easily iterating over the elements of a
         sequence, from Eric Niebler.
     * Statechart Library:
         Arbitrarily complex finite state machines can be implemented in
         easily readable and maintainable C++ code, from Andreas Huber.
     * TR1 Library:
         An implementation of the C++ Technical Report on Standard  
Library
         Extensions, from John Maddock.
         This library does not itself implement the TR1 components,  
rather
         it's a thin wrapper that will include your standard  
library's TR1
         implementation (if it has one), otherwise it will include  
the Boost
         Library equivalents, and import them into namespace  
std::tr1. Highlights
         include: Reference Wrappers, Smart Pointers, result_of,
         Function Object Binders, Polymorphic function wrappers, Type  
Traits,
         Random Number Generators and Distributions, Tuples, Fixed  
Size Array,
         Hash Function Objects, Regular Expressions and
         Complex Number Additional Algorithms.
     * Typeof Library:
         Typeof operator emulation, from Arkadiy Vertleyb and Peder  
Holt.
     * Xpressive Library:
         Regular expressions that can be written as strings or as  
expression
         templates, and that can refer to each other and themselves  
recursively
         with the power of context-free grammars, from Eric Niebler.

Updated Libraries

     * Assign Library:
           o Support for ptr_map<key,T> via the new function  
ptr_map_insert()
           o Support for initialization of Pointer Containers when  
the containers
             hold pointers to an abstract base class.
     * Date_time library:
           o Support for new US/Canada timezone rules and other bug  
fixes.
             See Change History for details.
     * Filesystem Library:
         Major upgrade in preparation for submission to the C++  
Standards Committee
         for TR2. Changes include:
           o Internationalization, provided by class templates  
basic_path,
             basic_filesystem_error, basic_directory_iterator
             and basic_directory_entry.
           o Simplification of the path interface by eliminating  
special constructors
             to identify native formats.
           o Rationalization of predicate function design, including  
the addition of
             several new functions.
           o Clearer specification by reference to POSIX, the ISO/ 
IEEE Single Unix
             Standard, with provisions for Windows and other  
operating systems.
           o Preservation of existing user code whenever possible.
           o More efficient directory iteration.
           o Addition of a recursive directory iterator.
     * Function Library:
         Boost.Function now implements a small buffer optimization,  
which can
         drastically improve the performance when copying or  
constructing
         Boost.Function objects storing small function objects. For  
instance,
         bind(&X:foo, &x, _1, _2) requires no heap allocation when  
placed into
         a Boost.Function object.
     * Functional/Hash Library
           o Use declarations for standard classes, so that the  
library doesn't
             need to include all of their headers
           o Deprecated the <boost/functional/hash/*.hpp> headers.
           o Add support for the BOOST_HASH_NO_EXTENSIONS macro,  
which disables
             the extensions to TR1
           o Minor improvements to the hash functions for floating  
point numbers.
     * Graph Library:
           o edmonds_maximum_cardinality_matching, from Aaron Windsor.
           o lengauer_tarjan_dominator_tree, from JongSoo Park.
           o compressed_sparse_row_graph, from Jeremiah Willcock and  
Douglas Gregor
             of Indiana University.
           o sorted_erdos_renyi_iterator, from Jeremiah Willcock
             of Indiana University.
           o biconnected_components now supports a visitor and named  
parameters,
             from Janusz Piwowarski.
           o adjacency_matrix now models the Bidirectional Graph  
concept.
           o dijkstra_shortest_paths now calls vis.initialize_vertex  
for each
             vertex during initialization.
           o Note: the name of the compiled library for the GraphViz  
reader has
             changed to boost_graph (from bgl-viz) to match Boost  
conventions.
           o See the complete revision history for more information.
     * MultiArray Library:
         Boost.MultiArray now by default provides range-checking for  
operator[].
         Range checking can be disabled by defining the macro  
BOOST_DISABLE_ASSERTS
         before including multi_array.hpp. A bug in  
multi_array::resize() related
         to storage orders was fixed.
     * Multi-index Containers Library:
           o New random access indices.
           o Non key-based indices feature new rearrange facilities.
           o This version also includes a number of optimizations and  
usage
             improvements. For a complete list of changes,
             see the library release notes.
     * Optional Library:
           o boost::none_t and boost::none now added to Optional's  
documentation
           o Relational operators now directly support arguments of  
type 'T'
             and 'none_t'
           o operator->() now also works with reference types.
           o Helper functions make_optional(val), make_optional 
(cond,val)
             and get_optional_value_or(opt,alternative_value) added.
           o Constructor taking a boolean condition (as well as a  
value) added.
           o Member function get_value_or(alternative_value) added.
           o Incompatbility bug with mpl::apply<> fixed.
           o Converting assignment bug with uninitialized lvalues fixed.
     * Parameter Library:
           o Every ArgumentPack is now a valid MPL Forward Sequence.
           o Support for unnamed arguments (those whose keyword is  
deduced from
             their types) is added.
           o Support for named and unnamed template arguments is added.
           o New overload generation macros solve the forwarding  
problem directly.
           o See also the Python library changes, below.
     * Pointer Container Library:
           o Support for serialization via Boost.Serialization.
           o Exceptions can be disabled by defining the macro
             BOOST_PTR_CONTAINER_NO_EXCEPTIONS before including any  
header.
             This macro is defined by default if BOOST_NO_EXCEPTIONS  
is defined.
           o Additional std::auto_ptr<T> overloads added s.t. one can  
also pass
             std::auto_ptr<T> instead of only T* arguments to member  
functions.
           o transfer() now has weaker requirements s.t. one can  
transfer objects
             from ptr_container<Derived> to ptr_container<Base>,
     * Python Library:
           o Boost.Python now automatically appends C++ signatures to  
docstrings.
             The new docstring_options.hpp header is available to  
control the
             content of docstrings.
           o stl_input_iterator, for turning a Python iterable object  
into an STL
             input iterator, from Eric Niebler.
           o Support for void* conversions is added.
           o Integrated support for wrapping C++ functions built with  
the
             parameter library; keyword names are automatically known to
             docsstrings.
     * Signals Library:
         More improvements to signal invocation performance from  
Robert Zeh.
     * Smart Pointers Library:
           o Allocator support as proposed in N1851 (162 Kb PDF).
           o pointer_cast and pointer_to_other utilities to allow
             pointer-independent code, from Ion Gaztanaga.
     * String Algorithm Library:
           o lexicographical_compare
           o join
           o New comparison predicates is_less, is_not_greater.
           o Negative indexes support (like Perl) in various algorihtms
             (*_head/tail, *_nth).
     * Wave Library:
           o Wave now correctly recognizes pp-number tokens as  
mandated by the
             C++ Standard, which are converted to C++ tokens right  
before they are
             returned from the library.
           o Several new preprocessing hooks have been added. For a  
complete
             description please refer to the related documentation page:
             The Context Policy.
           o Shared library (dll) support has been added for the  
generated Wave
             libraries.
           o The overall error handling has been improved. It is now  
possible to
             recover and continue after an error or a warning was  
issued.
           o Support for optional comment and/or full whitespace  
preservation
             in the generated output stream has been added.
           o The Wave library now performs automatic include guard  
detection to
             avoid accessing header files more than once, if  
appropriate.
           o Full interactive mode has been added to the Wave tool.  
Now the Wave
             tool can be used just like Python or Perl for instance to
             interactively try out your BOOST_PP macros. Additionally  
it is now
             possible to load and save the current state of an  
interactive
             session (macro tables et.al.).
           o The overall performance has been improved by upto  
40-60%, depending
             on the concrete files to process.
           o Support for new pragmas has been added allowing to  
control certain
             library features from inside the preprocessed sources  
(partial
             output redirection, control of generated whitespace and  
#line
             directives).
           o Optional support for #pragma message "..." has been added.
           o This version also includes a number of bug fixes and usage
             improvements. For a complete list of changes, see the  
libraries
             change log.

Supported Compilers

   Boost is tested on a wide range of compilers and platforms. Since  
Boost libraries
   rely on modern C++ features not available in all compilers, not  
all Boost
   libraries will work with every compiler. The following compilers  
and platforms
   have been extensively tested with Boost, although many other  
compilers and
   platforms will work as well. For more information, see the  
regression test
   results.

     * Apple GCC 4.0.1 on Mac OS X.
     * Borland C++ 5.8.2 on Windows.
     * GNU C++
           o 3.2.x., 3.3.x, 3.4.x, 4.0.x, 4.1.x on Linux
           o 4.1.x on Solaris
           o 3.4.x on Windows
     * HP aC++ A.06.14.
     * Intel C++ 9.1 on Windows, 9.0 on Linux.
     * Metrowerks CodeWarrior 9.4 on Windows.
     * Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 (sp5, with and without STLport), 7.0,  
7.1, 8.0.
       Note: Boost does not support the non-standard "Safe" C++  
Library shipping
       with Visual C++ 8.0, which may result in many spurious  
warnings from Boost
       headers and other standards-conforming C++ code. To suppress  
these warnings,
       define the macro _SCL_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE.
     * Sun Studio 11 on Solaris.

Acknowledgements

   A great number of people contributed their time and expertise to  
make this release
   possible. Special thanks go to Vladimir Prus for making  
Boost.Build version 2 a
   reality, David Abrahams for authoring a new getting started guide  
and Greg D. for
   answering countless questions.

-- 
Thomas Witt
witt_at_[hidden]