boost 1.56 - a short overview

published at 07.08.2014 20:47 by Jens Weller

So, finally, we see a new release from boost. Boost 1.56 took a bit longer then most of us would have expected. The change to git and with it the modularization is the reason behind this. Both are very important milestones for boost. There are two new libraries and four new modules.

One of the expectations seems to be, that with boost modularization the dependencies get less, which they will. An overview gives this dependency report from June. Yet, the work on the modularization has just started. The libraries assert, core, lexical_cast and throw_exception have been moved to their own modules. For the end user nothing has changed, the boost 1.56 archive has the same layout like the releases before.

Boost 1.56 also brings two new libraries:

boost::align

boost::align is a C++11 std::align library written for boost. Its main purpose is to make align available to non C++11 projects powered by boost. Also the library seems to provide functionality which is not yet in the standard, such as an align_alloc.

boost::type_index

Similar to boost::align, boost::type_index provides the functionality of std::type_index from C++11 to boost. It also can be seen as a replacement, as for example it does not require RTTI. The library is a platform independent replacement for std::type_index/typeid. A first impression gives the example page.

Changes

A lot of work has been done in boost during the release of 1.55 and this release. So there are a lot of bug fixes, some even include breaking changes or ABIs.

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