Christian's Q2 2024 Update

By Christian Mazakas on

Jul 10, 2024

Boost.Http.Proto

This last quarter I worked primarily in the http-proto library, this time extending serialization to include chunking and zlib compression routines: deflate and gzip.

This is the first time I’ve ever used zlib so it was definitely a learning experience but it’s given me valuable insights into how other libraries of this nature work.

More importantly was reifying the application of such dynamic code with the existing code which supports many possible permutations.

Serialization in http-proto enables users to consume output in myriad different ways and the output itself can be framed and transformed as well. This forms a product space, in all actuality, so it was quite a feat to unify the core logic. The secret was operating in terms of distinct input and output buffer spaces, which could sometimes alias.

Boost.Compat

I also dedicated some time into working on Boost’s Compat module, which is home to several different kinds of polyfills of C++ constructs introduced in later C++ standards.

This time I worked on function_ref and as far as I’m aware, I’m the first implementor of such a facility. The class seems very simple on the surface. Just a simple non-owning type-erased view of a Callable object but the devil is always in the details.

const and noexcept each change the actual type of the function signature used so again, I had to test another proudct space. The testing burden for many of these components is quite high and while there are some, it’ll be interesting to see if anyone actually uses this facility and how well it fares.

Interestingly, function_ref actually has a form of currying with regards to member access and objects. This doesn’t seem well-known and actually came as a surprise to me.

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There’s a lot more to look forward to later in the year and I’ll be excited to write the next update.

• Christian