Boost 1.34.0, the latest version of peer-reviewed, portable C++
libraries, has been released. This release brings five new libraries
and extensive updates to existing libraries.
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 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 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.
o 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:
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
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,
Rene Rivera for
general build and installation support and Greg D. for answering
countless questions.
--
Thomas Witt
witt@acm.org
