Joaquín’s Q3 2024 Update

Joaquín's Q3 2024 Update

Oct 11, 2024

During Q3 2024, I’ve been working in the following areas:

Made visitation exclusive-locked within certain boost::concurrent_flat_set operations to allow for safe mutable modification of elements (PR#265, to be released in Boost 1.87.0). This is relevant for the work on Boost.Flyweight discussed below.
Added new concurrent, node-based containers boost::concurrent_node_map and boost::concurrent_node_set (PR#271, to be released in Boost 1.87.0). These containers are, expectedly, slower than their flat counterparts, but provide pointer stability, which can be critical in some scenarios.
Fixed std::initializer_list assignment issues for open-addressing containers (PR#277, to be released in Boost 1.87.0).
Added insert_and_visit and related operations to concurrent containers (PR#283, to be released in Boost 1.87.0). insert_or_visit(x, f) invokes the visitation function f only if the element is not inserted (that is, it already existed). By contrast, insert_and_visit(x, f1, f2) invokes f1 when the element is newly inserted, or f2 otherwise. This operation can’t be easily (or at all) emulated by user code, so it made sense that it be provided natively.
Reviewed Braden’s work on PR#269 and PR#274 (to be released in Boost 1.87.0).

Marked the interface of boost::flyweight as noexcept where appropriate (PR#16, to be released in Boost 1.87.0).
In response to a request from user Romain on Slack, added concurrent_factory (PR#17, to be released in Boost 1.87.0). This factory, which is built on top of boost::concurrent_node_set, provides excellent performance in multithreaded population scenarios as it does not require any external locking policy.

Updated CI support for this library (PR#75). Although nominally C++03 compliant, Boost.MultiIndex has been brought to require C++11 by way of its internal dependencies; this opens the possibility of eventually modernizing the code base, and in particular getting rid of its usage of Boost.MPL in favor of Boost.Mp11. Stay tuned.

Authored the Boost 1.86 announcement tweet.
I’ve served as the PM for the new Boost website project (preview at boost.io). On September 24 I transferred PM responsibilities to Rob Beeston, who’s been doing an awesome job at it since. I’ll be keeping an eye to this project, though, and will help any way I can.

I’ve proofread the excellent articles by Braden Ganetsky on Natvis and GDB debugging support for Boost.Unordered.
Reviewed and provided feedback for an early reference section of Alfredo Correa’s Boost.Multi upcoming proposal.
The Boost Asset Stewardship Review that took place on September determined that a Fiscal Sponsorhip Committee (FSC) be created in charge of representing the Boost community in its relationship with the C++ Alliance as the newly elected fiscal sponsor for the project. I was appointed as a member of the FSC alongside Ion Gaztañaga and René Rivera, and will do my best to serve the community from that position.