Boost 1.36 Released

AndrewStephens writes "Good news for C++ programmers: Boost 1.36 has been released with 4 new libraries (including very useful exception templates) and a host of updates. In particular, boost.asio (the cross platform AsyncIO library) has seen major additions and now supports asynchronous disk operations on Windows. Almost every modern C++ codebase uses Boost somewhere, and many of its features find their way into the official language specifications."

Comments

Re:Use of Boost?

[eddy]

While I agree that it's a bit pissy to imply that if you're not using boost in your c++ project, you're not 'modern', neither installation nor license ought to be much of an issue. The license is as clear cut as it can be:

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person or organization obtaining a copy of the software and accompanying documentation covered by this license (the "Software") to use, reproduce, display, distribute, execute, and transmit the Software, and to prepare derivative works of the Software, and to permit third-parties to whom the Software is furnished to do so, all subject to the following:

The copyright notices in the Software and this entire statement, including the above license grant, this restriction and the following disclaimer, must be included in all copies of the Software, in whole or in part, and all derivative works of the Software, unless such copies or derivative works are solely in the form of machine-executable object code generated by a source language processor.

C'mon, that ought to be pretty straight forward, even for a lawyer.

It's been a while since I checked out a new version, but most of Boost didn't need installation since it's mostly include files with templates. You just put them somewhere and include them. Now, there are some libraries (regexp iirc) that need to be compiled, but it builds out of the box on gcc for me.

Re:Slight exaggeration?

[imbaczek]

you'll be missing out, boost fixes lots, I mean LOTS of C++ deficiencies... at a cost of compile times and sometimes bogus compiler errors.

Re:I've never used it

[EWIPlayer]

A lot of the other nay-sayers appear to be just useless trolls. You don't, so I'm going to reply.

You're really selling boost and, by derivation, yourself short. Boost makes a ton of things simple and robust. I wrote the following, cross platform C++ code with boost:

• asynchronous and robust TCP server in 80 lines of code - and it's decently configurable
• a command line options parser that's truly extensible in about 60 lines of code.
• a very solid threading model in about 100 lines of code
• a synchronized and notification-based queue in about 50 lines of code
• ... the list goes on for quite a while ...

C++ is old and that means that it doesn't have anything like a modern language has. What it's missing, Boost fills in (not completely, mind you, but it does a really good job). With C++ you get speed and controllable code (C# runs a close second, but I still wouldn't write an OS in it), and with Boost you get a ton of ease back in the language as well.

You're doing yourself a serious disservice by not looking into it. The one thing that I can't believe is that you really did look into it, and certainly not twice. If you did, you'd know it's not just a source of "template tricks"... far, far, far from it.

If you're not using boost, I can guarantee you're reinventing the wheel... badly.