Boost News

Version 1.35.0

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 12:00:00 GMT

New Libraries

Asio: Portable networking, including sockets, timers, hostname resolution and socket iostreams, from Chris Kohlhoff.
Bimap: Boost.Bimap is a bidirectional maps library for C++. With Boost.Bimap you can create associative containers in which both types can be used as key, from Matias Capeletto.
Circular Buffer: STL compliant container also known as ring or cyclic buffer, from Jan Gaspar.
Function Types: Boost.FunctionTypes provides functionality to classify, decompose and synthesize function, function pointer, function reference and pointer to member types. From Tobias Schwinger.
Fusion: Library for working with tuples, including various containers, algorithms, etc. From Joel de Guzman, Dan Marsden and Tobias Schwinger.
GIL: Generic Image Library, from Lubomir Bourdev and Hailin Jin.
Interprocess: Shared memory, memory mapped files, process-shared mutexes, condition variables, containers and allocators, from Ion Gaztañaga.
Intrusive: Intrusive containers and algorithms, from Ion Gaztañaga.
Math/Special Functions: A wide selection of mathematical special functions from John Maddock, Paul Bristow, Hubert Holin and Xiaogang Zhang.
Math/Statistical Distributions: A wide selection of univariate statistical distributions and functions that operate on them from John Maddock and Paul Bristow
MPI: Message Passing Interface library, for use in distributed-memory parallel application programming, from Douglas Gregor and Matthias Troyer.
System: Operating system support, including the diagnostics support that will be part of the C++0x standard library, from Beman Dawes.

Updated Libraries

Graph: Generic graph components and algorithms. Highlights:
- kolmogorov_max_flow, from Stephan Diederich as part of the 2006 Google Summer of Code.
- read_dimacs_max_flow and write_dimacs_max_flow for max-flow problems, from Stephan Diederich.
- read_graphml and write_graphml for GraphML input/output, from Tiago de Paula Peixoto.
- minimum_cycle_ratio and maximum_cycle_ratio, from Dmitry Bufistov and Andrey Parfenov.
- boyer_myrvold_planarity_test, along with a suite of algorithms for planar graphs, from Aaron Windsor.
- LEDA Adaptor improvements, from Jens Müller.
Hash: A TR1 hash function object, from Daniel James. Highlights:
- Support for long long, std::complex.
- Improved the algorithm for hashing floating point numbers.
- A few bug and warning fixes.
Iostreams: Framework for defining streams, stream buffers and i/o filters, from Jonathan Turkanis. Highlights:
- Clarified the semantics of close(). This fixes several bugs but will break some existing code. See Release Notes for details.
- Numerous other bug fixes and optimizations.
Multi Array:
- Added "dimensionality" compile-time constante to the MultiArray concept.
- For greater control over error situations, uses of C++ assert have been replaced with BOOST_ASSERT.
- Fixed a bug with simultaneous resizing and reindexing.
Multi-index Containers:
- New global_fun predefined key extractor.
- Added iterator_to facility.
- Included support for non-standard allocators such as those of Boost.Interprocess, which makes multi_index_containers placeable in shared memory.
- New versions of modify and modify_key with rollback, as described in the tutorial.
- A number of optimizations and minor improvements have also been included. For a complete list of changes, see the library release notes.
Serialization: Boost.Serialization has been updated with optimizations for dense arrays.
Thread:
- The Thread library has been updated to be more in line with the C++0x working draft.
- Instances of boost::thread and of the various lock types are now movable.
- Threads can be interrupted at interruption points.
- Condition variables can now be used with any type that implements the Lockable concept, through the use of boost::condition_variable_any (boost::condition is a typedef to boost::condition_variable_any, provided for backwards compatibility). boost::condition_variable is provided as an optimization, and will only work with boost::unique_lock<boost::mutex> (boost::mutex::scoped_lock).
- Thread IDs are separated from boost::thread, so a thread can obtain it's own ID (using boost::this_thread::get_id()), and IDs can be used as keys in associative containers, as they have the full set of comparison operators.
- Timeouts are now implemented using the Boost DateTime library, through a typedef boost::system_time for absolute timeouts, and with support for relative timeouts in many cases. boost::xtime is supported for backwards compatibility only.
- Locks are implemented as publicly accessible templates boost::lock_guard, boost::unique_lock, boost::shared_lock, and boost::upgrade_lock, which are templated on the type of the mutex. The Lockable concept has been extended to include publicly available lock() and unlock() member functions, which are used by the lock types.
- boost::try_mutex has been removed, and the functionality subsumed into boost::mutex. boost::try_mutex is left as a typedef, but is no longer a separate class.
- boost::recursive_try_mutex has been removed, and the functionality subsumed into boost::recursive_mutex. boost::recursive_try_mutex is left as a typedef, but is no longer a separate class.
- boost::detail::thread::lock_ops has been removed. Code that relies on the lock_ops implementation detail will no longer work, as this has been removed, as it is no longer necessary now that mutex types now have public lock() and unlock() member functions.
- scoped_lock constructors with a second parameter of type bool are no longer provided. With previous boost releases, boost::mutex::scoped_lock some_lock(some_mutex,false); could be used to create a lock object that was associated with a mutex, but did not lock it on construction. This facility has now been replaced with the constructor that takes a boost::defer_lock_type as the second parameter: boost::mutex::scoped_lock some_lock(some_mutex,boost::defer_lock);
- The broken boost::read_write_mutex has been replaced with boost::shared_mutex.
Wave: Standards conformant implementation of the mandated C99/C++ preprocessor functionality packed behind an easy to use iterator interface, from Hartmut Kaiser. Highlights:
- Added the possibility to continue the preprocessing after an error occured.
- Added the macro introspection API to the wave::context object.
- Added threading support to the library.
- Improved the overall performance by upto 30%.
- Changed and unified preprocessor hook interface (this is an interface breaking change!), added several new preprocessor hook functions.
- Added serialization support.
- Added new examples (for instance: Hannibal - a partial C++ parser, by Danny Havenith).
- Added a new lexical analyzer based on Ben Hansons Lexertl library.
- Fixed a large number of other bugs and problems.
Xpressive: 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. Highlights:
- Added semantic actions to static regexes. A semantic action is code that executes when part of a regular expression matches.
- Added custom assertions to static regexes. A custom assertion is a Boolean predicate that can participate in the regex match.
- Added named regexes for embedding a static or dynamic regex into a dynamic regex. This can be used to create dynamic regex grammars.
- Added named captures to dynamic regexes, like Perl.

Supported Compilers

The following compilers are officially supported in this release:

HP aC++ A.06.14 on HP-UX
Darwin GCC 4.01.
GNU GCC up to version 4.2.1, on Linux and Solaris.
Intel C++ 9.1 on Linux.
Intel C++ 10.1 on Windows.
Microsoft Visual C++ 7.1 and 8 on Windows (Visual Sudio .NET 2003 and 2005).

In addition the following compilers should be well supported, but weren't part of out release criteria for 1.35:

IBM Visual Age 9.0 on AIX.
Intel C++ 10 and later on Linux.
GNU GCC 4.3 and later on Linux and Solaris.
Microsoft Visual C++ 9 (Visual Studio .NET 2008).

Acknowledgements

Beman Dawes managed this release.

Website 1.0 Launch

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:00:00 GMT

After much work the new Boost web site is here. Like all software the site has bugs, so be gentle and reports problems in the bug tracker. Much thanks to the Boost community for the help in testing, criticizing, and writing. But I especially appreciate all the work Daniel James to translate content without which the web site would be a much emptier place.

Version 1.34.1

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 12:00:00 GMT

This is a bug fix release addressing many problems with the 1.34.0 release. It is a recommended upgrade for all users of Boost 1.34.0. For a complete list of fixes see Boost Trac.

Supported Compilers

New in this release is improved support for the IBM XL C/C++ compiler.

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. New in this release 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++
- 3.2.x., 3.3.x, 3.4.x, 4.0.x, 4.1.x on Linux
- 4.1.x on Solaris
- 3.4.x on Windows
HP C++ for Tru64 UNIX 7.1.
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

Thomas Witt managed this release.

A great number of people contributed their time and expertise to make this release possible. Special thanks go to Kim Barrett consolidating Boost.Iostreams changes from various branches and Rene Rivera for general build and installation support.

Version 1.34.0

Sat, 12 May 2007 12:00:00 GMT

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:
- Support for ptr_map<key,T> via the new function ptr_map_insert()
- Support for initialization of Pointer Containers when the containers hold pointers to an abstract base class.
Date_time library:
- 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:
- Internationalization, provided by class templates basic_path, basic_filesystem_error, basic_directory_iterator, and basic_directory_entry.
- Simplification of the path interface by eliminating special constructors to identify native formats.
- Rationalization of predicate function design, including the addition of several new functions.
- Clearer specification by reference to POSIX, the ISO/IEEE Single Unix Standard, with provisions for Windows and other operating systems.
- Preservation of existing user code whenever possible.
- More efficient directory iteration.
- 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:
- Use declarations for standard classes, so that the library doesn't need to include all of their headers
- Deprecated the <boost/functionalhash*.hpp> headers.
- Add support for the BOOST_HASH_NO_EXTENSIONS macro, which disables the extensions to TR1
- Minor improvements to the hash functions for floating point numbers.
Graph Library:
- edmonds_maximum_cardinality_matching, from Aaron Windsor.
- lengauer_tarjan_dominator_tree, from JongSoo Park.
- compressed_sparse_row_graph, from Jeremiah Willcock and Douglas Gregor of Indiana University.
- sorted_erdos_renyi_iterator, from Jeremiah Willcock of Indiana University.
- biconnected_components now supports a visitor and named parameters, from Janusz Piwowarski.
- adjacency_matrix now models the Bidirectional Graph concept.
- dijkstra_shortest_paths now calls vis.initialize_vertex for each vertex during initialization.
- Note: the name of the compiled library for the GraphViz reader has changed to boost_graph (from bgl-viz) to match Boost conventions.
- 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:
- New random access indices.
- Non key-based indices feature new rearrange facilities.
- This version also includes a number of optimizations and usage improvements. For a complete list of changes, see the library release notes.
Optional Library:
- boost::none_t and boost::none now added to Optional's documentation
- Relational operators now directly support arguments of type 'T' and 'none_t'
- operator->() now also works with reference types.
- Helper functions make_optional(val), make_optional(cond,val) and get_optional_value_or(opt,alternative_value) added.
- Constructor taking a boolean condition (as well as a value) added.
- Member function get_value_or(alternative_value) added.
- Incompatbility bug with mpl::apply<> fixed.
- Converting assignment bug with uninitialized lvalues fixed.
Parameter Library:
- Every ArgumentPack is now a valid MPL Forward Sequence.
- Support for unnamed arguments (those whose keyword is deduced from their types) is added.
- Support for named and unnamed template arguments is added.
- New overload generation macros solve the forwarding problem directly.
- See also the Python library changes, below.
Pointer Container Library:
- Support for serialization via Boost.Serialization.
- 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.
- 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.
- transfer() now has weaker requirements s.t. one can transfer objects from ptr_container<Derived> to ptr_container<Base>,
Python Library:
- Boost.Python now automatically appends C++ signatures to docstrings. The new docstring_options.hpp header is available to control the content of docstrings.
- stl_input_iterator, for turning a Python iterable object into an STL input iterator, from Eric Niebler.
- Support for void* conversions is added.
- Integrated support for wrapping C++ functions built with the parameter library; keyword names are automatically known to docsstrings.
- Enhancements to the API for better embedding support (boost::python::import(), boost::python::exec(), and boost::python::exec_file()).
Signals Library: More improvements to signal invocation performance from Robert Zeh.
Smart Pointers Library:
- Allocator support as proposed in N1851 (162 Kb PDF).
- pointer_cast and pointer_to_other utilities to allow pointer-independent code, from Ion Gaztanaga.
String Algorithm Library:
- lexicographical_compare
- join
- New comparison predicates is_less, is_not_greater.
- Negative indexes support (like Perl) in various algorihtms (*_head/tail, *_nth).
Wave Library:
- 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.
- Several new preprocessing hooks have been added. For a complete description please refer to the related documentation page: The Context Policy.
- Shared library (dll) support has been added for the generated Wave libraries.
- The overall error handling has been improved. It is now possible to recover and continue after an error or a warning was issued.
- Support for optional comment and/or full whitespace preservation in the generated output stream has been added.
- The Wave library now performs automatic include guard detection to avoid accessing header files more than once, if appropriate.
- 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.).
- The overall performance has been improved by upto 40-60%, depending on the concrete files to process.
- 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).
- Optional support for #pragma message "..." has been added.
- 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++
- 3.2.x., 3.3.x, 3.4.x, 4.0.x, 4.1.x on Linux
- 4.1.x on Solaris
- 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

Thomas Witt managed this release.

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.

asio Formal Review Begins

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 12:00:00 GMT

The review will run until Friday December 23rd. The Boost.Asio library is intended for programmers using C++ for systems programming, where access to operating system functionality such as networking is often required.