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Subject: [Boost-users] [afio][v1.30 "C++ Now edition" released]
From: Niall Douglas (s_sourceforge_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-03-18 00:47:42


Dear Boost,

I am very pleased to announce the v1.30 release of proposed Boost
AFIO, a Boost library implementing asynchronous file input/output
which has been in the review queue since 2013. This is the version of
AFIO which will be overviewed in my talk at C++ Now 2015. It also
demonstrates the validity of the clang AST driven BindLib standalone
Boost library conversion technique which will also be overviewed at
C++ Now.

Source distro:
https://github.com/BoostGSoC13/boost.afio/archive/v1.30_Boost_v1.57.zi
p

Docs and CI dashboard: https://boostgsoc13.github.io/boost.afio/

Major new features in the v1.30 release:

* Performance was improved by removing the transactional memory
support in the v1.2 engine which is now compile time enabled only.
Throughput now reaches up to 85% of raw ASIO and average latencies
were reduced by 48%, yielding a 15 microsecond average latency with
+/- 0.15 microsecond at a 95% confidence interval. This should enable
AFIO to handle the latest generation PCIe SSDs with their 80
microsecond latencies reasonably well.

* AFIO is now capable of complete standalone usage no Boost
dependencies whatsoever, including for its unit testing via a
Boost.Test emulation.

* Due to its use of libclang AST generated template aliasing to allow
user swapping of STL 11 implementation, minimum compilers required
are now VS2013, GCC 4.7 and clang 3.2. All the VS2010 workarounds
baggage has been eradicated.

* All things related to async_data_op_req are now fully
metaprogrammed with automatic generation by the compiler of suitable
ASIO scatter-gather buffers from input types and STL containers with
correct scatter-gather buffer coalescing where safe to do so. This
automatic generation is user customisable via free function
specialisation.

* Support for relative paths from an open file descriptor was added.
This lets you specify a file descriptor as a base from which a path
fragment
operates with the path resolution atomically performed in the kernel,
and
therefore the path of the base file descriptor may rapidly change
safely.

* AFIO is now optimally filing system race condition safe on all
supported platforms, with per-API documentation of how much race
safety is guaranteed per platform. A soak unit test verifies per
commit that perfect race safety under severe and rapid filing system
change is maintained.

* A new afio::path type which very thinly wraps filesystem::path was
added. The new afio specific path type makes the management of NT
kernel path to Win32 path transition and conversion explicit, and
therefore much harder to accidentally get wrong. A new
normalise_path() function can convert a NT kernel path to a
traditional Win32 path, complete with drive letter.

* New platforms supported: Apple OS X and Android 5.0.

* New filing system features support:

All platforms: sparse file support, storage extent enumeration,
extent deallocation ("hole punching"), volume metadata fetching
(statfs), open file handle path discovery, hard link support, atomic
relink (rename) support.

Windows only: file symlinking, NT lock file performance flags (lock
file performance is now not far from POSIX), workaround semantics for
all the ways Windows will surprise you on the filing system such as
files and directories which won't delete. AFIO now does a fair job of
replicating POSIX filing system semantics on Windows (and better than
Mingw/Cygwin presently).

Linux: symlinks are now opened as file descriptors on kernels
supporting that feature.

* Doubled the size of the tutorial, with all the new material being
non-toy examples. There is a particularly nifty "File locking via
only atomic appending and hole punching" algorithm implementation in
there, and it holds up surprisingly well compared to traditional file
locks except on ZFS. Plus, it's completely portable.

* Some utility routines in preparation for AFIO v1.4: a
cryptographically strong random filename generator, a hugepage TLB
STL allocator useful for efficient file copy buffers, a very highly
optimised C++ 14 constexpr constructing arbitrary Hamming code SECDED
template class (an amazing 22 cycles per byte for the 32784,32768
code), and secure to-hex and from-hex validating converters.

* No shortage of bug fixes, helped hugely by additional unit testing
for correct error handling.

Detailed changelog can be found at
https://boostgsoc13.github.io/boost.afio/doc/html/afio/release_notes.h
tml. I'll
tag a Boost 1.58 release on github once Boost 1.58 is out.

This release took far longer than I originally intended mainly due to
the
extensive debugging of weird filing system races, and for six weeks
now I've
been working till 5am every night after my day job. I cannot tell you
how glad I am to see this release out! My enormous thanks to my
family who have put up with a lot for this release, and to my
employer for a fairly dopey employee recently. Bed, here I come!

Niall

-- 
ned Productions Limited Consulting
http://www.nedproductions.biz/ 
http://ie.linkedin.com/in/nialldouglas/



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