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| The Boost web site provides free peer-reviewed portable C++ source libraries. The emphasis is on libraries which work well with the C++ Standard Library. The libraries are intended to be widely useful, and are in regular use by thousands of programmers across a broad spectrum of applications. A further goal is to establish "existing practice" and provide reference implementations so that Boost libraries are suitable for eventual standardization. Ten Boost libraries will be included in the C++ Standards Committee's upcoming C++ Standard Library Technical Report as a step toward becoming part of a future C++ Standard. Although Boost was begun by members of the C++ Standards Committee Library Working Group, participation has expanded to include thousands programmers from the C++ community at large. ## Participation If you are interested in participating in Boost, please join our main developers mailing list. Discussions are highly technical, and list members are encouraged to participate in formal reviews of proposed libraries. There is also a users mailing list, and several project specific lists. Both the main Boost developers list and the users list are also accessible as newsgroups. ## Search Boost
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## Latest News ### January 26, 2004 - Version 1.31.0 #### New License A unified Boost Software License has been developed and will gradually replace the individual licenses for most Boost libraries. The new license offers better legal protection for both users and developers, and should speed user's legal reviews of Boost libraries. Dave Abrahams led the Boost effort to develop better licensing. The legal team was led by Diane Cabell, Director, Clinical Programs, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School. Devin Smith, attorney, Nixon Peabody LLP, wrote the Boost License. Eva Chan, Harvard Law School, contributed analysis of issues and drafts of various legal documents. Please Note: Many of the Boost libraries are still using earlier licenses, though all conform to the Boost License Requirements. After this release we will begin an effort to move toward uniform use of the new license. #### Build and Installation New Getting Started procedures ease download and installation, from Rene Rivera and others. Improved support for libraries requiring separate compilation, from John Maddock and others. #### New Libraries enable_if: Selective inclusion of function template overloads, from Jaakko Järvi, Jeremiah Willcock, and Andrew Lumsdaine. This is an important new technique which exploits the SFINAE (substitution-failure-is-not-an-error) principle. Variant Library: Safe, generic, stack-based discriminated union container, from Eric Friedman and Itay Maman. #### Updated Libraries Compose: This library has been deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Use Bind or Lambda instead. Date Time Library: A whole host of bug fixes, new features, and documentation improvements. See Date Time Change History for details. Filesystem Library: Several added functions, including improved checking for directory and file name portability. Iterator Library: Major version upgrade, with interface as proposed for the C++ library TR, including an improved `iterator_adaptor` design plus several new components, from David Abrahams, Jeremy Siek, and Thomas Witt. MultiArray: The `multi_array` class template now provides an element-preserving resize operation as well as default construction (see the reference manual for more information). Python Library: Support for Python 2.3 and Intel C++ on Linux Container Indexing Suite added. injected constructors and wrapped function objects. wrapping static data members. `std::wstring` conversions. Improved keyword arguments Better error messages, including name demangling for GCC. Simpler build procedure. ...and more... Random Number Library: Interface changed to match the C++ TR proposal, from Jens Maurer. Regex: Completely new matching algorithm is now much faster than before, plus a selection of new features and enhancements. Boost.Spirit 1.8.0: Multiple grammar start rules Multiple Scanner rules (no more scanner business woes) More dynamic parsers Predefined actors Numerous bug fixes and QOI stuff ...and more... Starting from Spirit v1.8.0, ill conforming compilers will no longer be supported. If you are still using one of these older compilers, please use Spirit v1.6.x. See Spirit's Site for more details. Test Library: Free function template based test case Custom exception translators support in execution monitor and register_exception_translator added for unit test framework Added support for multi-module unit tests in automatic registration facility Floating point comparison algorithm reworked (Is not backward compatible!!!) Added support for custom users predicate returning both boolean result code and possibly error message Documentation structure rework and update For complete list of changes see Test Library release notes #### Miscellaneous Expanded testing and fixes for non-conforming compilers. Web site hosting now provided by SourceForge. ### August 19, 2003 - Version 1.30.2 (bugfix release) Boost Consulting is now hosting Boost CVS mirrors - see our download page. Backported changes to the config system, to better handle new compiler releases. Bugs in regression reporting in subproject tests were fixed. Tests are now run in the context of the user's PATH environment settings msvc-stlport and intel-win32-stlport toolsets now build static libraries with multithreading enabled, to be compatible with the STLPort builds. intel-win32 toolset now handles `wchar_t` correctly when intel is installed over msvc6. Backported fixes from the main trunk which prevent errors building the Boost.Test library in its default configuration. Backported portability improvements for checked_delete. Locale support for metrowerks (requiring a statically-linked runtime) is more uniformly handled. Backported conversion/lexical_cast's `wchar_t` fixes from the main trunk. intel-linux-tools: added `rt` to FINDLIBS in order to make the `clock_gettime()` function available (backport of a patch in CVS HEAD). regression/compiler_status.cpp: backported fixes in error log links generation. ### August 12, 2003 - ALERT Significant problems were found in the 1.30.1 release, so it has been withdrawn from the website. These problems mostly take the form of missing files due to an error by the release manager in using CVS to tag the release. We expect to release Version 1.30.2 in a few days. Stay tuned. Until then, you may want to get the `RC_1_30_0` branch (which, with only very slight modification, will become version 1.30.2) from our CVS repository or the CVS mirror at Boost Consulting . ### August 4, 2003 - Version 1.30.1 (bugfix release) Fixes were made to the following libraries: The Boost.Lambda library is now usable with gcc-2.95.2 Boost.Spirit: Fixed. Using MSVC++6 (SP5), calling the assign action with a string value on parsers using the file_iterator will not work. Fixed: using assign semantic action in a grammar with a multi_pass iterator adaptor applied to an std::istream_iterator resulted in a failure to compile under msvc 7.0. Fixed: There is a bug in the `range_run<CharT>::set (range<CharT> const& r)` function in "boost/spirit/utility/impl/chset/range_run.ipp". Fixed: handling of trailing whitespace bug (ast_parse/pt_parse related) Fixed: comment_p and end of data bug Fixed: Most trailing space bug Fixed: `chset<>::operator~(range<>)` bug, `operator&(chset<>, range<>)` bug, `operator&(range<>, chset<>)` bug Fixed: `impl::detach_clear` bug Fixed: mismatch closure return type bug Fixed: `access_node_d[]` and `access_match_d[]` iterator bugs Fixed a bug regarding threadsafety of Phoenix/Spirit closures. The Boost Template Metaprogramming Library (MPL)'s typeof implementation is now compatible with Metrowerks CodeWarrior Pro8. Boost.Function: workaround for the new Borland patch (version 0x564) and MSVC++ .NET 2003. Boost.Config, Boost.Format, and Boost.Regex have been adjusted to avoid warnings with GCC-3.3, and Boost.Format also now works with string types other than `std::string`. Smart Pointers `checked_delete` now works on more platforms Compatibility with the SunPro compiler Added missing `#include`s. Boost.Python warning suppression for finicky compilers fixed a crashing bug in the `raw_function` facility when no keyword arguments were passed. Improved conversion of NULL `shared_ptr`s to Python. ### March 19, 2003 - Version 1.30.0 Filesystem Library added - Portable paths, iteration over directories, and other useful filesystem operations, from Beman Dawes. Optional Library added - A discriminated-union wrapper for optional values, from Fernando Cacciola. Interval Library added - Extends the usual arithmetic functions to mathematical intervals, from Guillaume Melquiond, Hervé Brönnimann and Sylvain Pion. MPL added - Template metaprogramming framework of compile-time algorithms, sequences and metafunction classes, from Aleksey Gurtovoy. Spirit Library added - An LL (unlimited lookahead) parser framework that represents parsers directly as EBNF grammars in inlined C++ source code, complete with semantic actions, ASTs and much more, from Joel de Guzman and team. Smart Pointers Library - cast functions are now spelled static_pointer_cast / dynamic_pointer_cast ; enable_shared_from_this added; shared_ptr::shared_ptr(), shared_ptr::reset(), weak_ptr::weak_ptr(), weak_ptr::reset() no longer throw; get_deleter added; weak_ptr::get() removed; make_shared is now spelled weak_ptr::lock() ; intrusive_ptr documentation added; some experimental undocumented shared_ptr features have been removed; a page describing some smart pointer programming techniques has been added. boost/assert.hpp, boost/current_function.hpp, boost/throw_exception.hpp, boost/checked_delete.hpp have been documented. Date-Time Library - several fixes and small additions including an interface change to partial_date. See Date-Time Change History for more details. Function Library - added support for assignment to zero (to clear) and comparison against zero (to check if empty). Operators Library - now takes advantage of named return value optimization (NRVO) when available, from Daniel Frey. Regression Tests - Much expanded, plus a very nice summary page from Rene Rivera. Test Library - introduced following new facilities: Automatic registration of unit tests XML log format XML report format BOOST_CHECK_NO_THROW test tool BOOST_BITWISE_CHECK test tool For complete list of changes see Test Library release notes Many fixes and enhancements to other libraries. ### October 10, 2002 - Version 1.29.0 Date-Time Library added - Dates, times, leap seconds, infinity, and more, from Jeff Garland. Dynamic Bitset added - A runtime sized version of the `std::bitset` class from Jeremy Siek and Chuck Allison. Format Library added - Type-safe 'printf-like' format operations, from Samuel Krempp. Function Library: Major syntactic changes have been made. Some old syntax and little-used features have been deprecated (and will be removed shortly), and the syntax for the `boost::function` class template has been greatly improved on conforming compilers. Please see the compatibility note for more information. Multi-array Library added - Multidimensional containers and adaptors for arrays of contiguous data, from Ron Garcia. Preprocessor Library: Major upgrade, from Paul Mensonides. Python Library - Version 2 is released, from Dave Abrahams and others. This is a major rewrite which works on many more compilers and platforms, with a completely new interface and lots of new features. Boost.Python v2 requires Python 2.2 or later. Signals Library added - Managed signals & slots callback implementation, from Doug Gregor. Test Library: Major new version, including full unit test capabilities, from Gennadiy Rozental. uBLAS Library added - Basic linear algebra for dense, packed and sparse matrices, from Joerg Walter and Mathias Koch.

Revised 13 January, 2004

© Copyright Beman Dawes, David Abrahams, 1998-2003.

Use, modification, and distribution is subject to the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt)