Searching for a collection of high-quality, open source, platform- and compiler-independent libraries? Look to Boost. Interested in joining a community of ambitious, talented C++ developers working on state-of-the-art library design and implementation? Look to Boost. Want a glimpse of what C++ might look like in the future? Look to Boost. Boost is both a community of C++ developers and a collection of freely downloadable C++ libraries. Its web site is http://boost.org. You should bookmark it now. There are many C++ organizations and web sites, of course, but Boost has two things going for it that no other organization can match. First, it has a uniquely close and influential relationship with the C++ standardization committee. Boost was founded by committee members, and there continues to be strong overlap between the Boost and committee memberships. In addition, Boost has always had as one of its goals to act as a testing ground for capabilities that could be added to Standard C++. One result of this relationship is that of the 14 new libraries introduced into C++ by TR1 (see Item 54), more than two-thirds are based on work done at Boost. The second special characteristic of Boost is its process for accepting libraries. It's based on public peer review. If you'd like to contribute a library to Boost, you start by posting to the Boost developers mailing list to gauge interest in the library and initiate the process of preliminary examination of your work. Thus begins a cycle that the web site summarizes as "Discuss, refine, resubmit. Repeat until satisfied." Eventually, you decide that your library is ready for formal submission. A review manager confirms that your library meets Boost's minimal requirements. For example, it must compile under at least two compilers (to demonstrate nominal portability), and you have to attest that the library can be made available under an acceptable license (e.g., the library must allow free commercial and non-commercial use). Then your submission is made available to the Boost community for official review. During the review period, volunteers go over your library materials (e.g., source code, design documents, user documentation, etc.) and consider questions such as these:
These comments are posted to a Boost mailing list, so reviewers and others can see and respond to one another's remarks. At the end of the review period, the review manager decides whether your library is accepted, conditionally accepted, or rejected. Peer reviews do a good job of keeping poorly written libraries out of Boost, but they also help educate library authors in the considerations that go into the design, implementation, and documentation of industrial-strength cross-platform libraries. Many libraries require more than one official review before being declared worthy of acceptance. Boost contains dozens of libraries, and more are added on a continuing basis. From time to time, some libraries are also removed, typically because their functionality has been superseded by a newer library that offers greater functionality or a better design (e.g., one that is more flexible or more efficient). The libraries vary widely in size and scope. At one extreme are libraries that conceptually require only a few lines of code (but are typically much longer after support for error handling and portability is added). One such library is Conversion, which provides safer or more convenient cast operators. Its numeric_cast function, for example, throws an exception if converting a numeric value from one type to another leads to overflow or underflow or a similar problem, and lexical_cast makes it possible to cast any type supporting operator<< into a string very useful for diagnostics, logging, etc. At the other extreme are libraries offering such extensive capabilities, entire books have been written about them. These include the Boost Graph Library (for programming with arbitrary graph structures) and the Boost MPL Library ("metaprogramming library"). Boost's bevy of libraries addresses a cornucopia of topics, grouped into over a dozen general categories. Those categories include:
Remember, that's just a sampling of the libraries you'll find at Boost. It's not an exhaustive list. Boost offers libraries that do many things, but it doesn't cover the entire programming landscape. For example, there is no library for GUI development, nor is there one for communicating with databases. At least there's not now not as I write this. By the time you read it, however, there might be. The only way to know for sure is to check. I suggest you do it right now: http://boost.org. Even if you don't find exactly what you're looking for, you're certain to find something interesting there. Things to Remember
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