[Rivet] Rivet boost::BOOST_FOREACH

[Andrii Verbytskyi]

Dear Andy,
1) thanks a lot for the quick reply.

2)
> We are following the BOOST advice here:
> 
> http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_58_0/doc/html/foreach.html#foreach.introduction.making__literal_boost_foreach__literal__prettier

But that is not 1.55 you are using and might not (and it doesn't!) fit
Rivet >1.48 requirement. Quite confusing.



3)
> I have a feeling that this bug relates to the version of Boost you're 
> using, in conjunction with more recent compilers. 

Well, I try to stick to the default systems, I do not want to introduce 
my custom versions for boost, gcc, glibc and so on. Now my system is
vanilla CentOS7.

4)

> I recall that an 
> updated boost.m4 script that we introduced in the recent version 2.3.0 
> addresses the problem... 

No, I've tried 2.2 and 2.1 as well.

5)
> or rather it detects that there will be a 
> problem and requires a consistent GCC+Boost installation. 
It requires boost>1.48 or so and nothing more to solve r/lvalue problem.


6)
> The *real* solution will be to require and use the C++11 range-for 
> construct instead of Boost's macro. This will also work a lot better for 
> e.g. iterating over std::maps, which don't work well with the macro 
> approach. And of course we can replace a lot (but not all, I think) 
> Boost functionality in Rivet with C++11 standard features
As I see, foreach appears in quite simple constructions for which even 
C++0x will work fine. I mean "for (std::<blabla>::iterator it=...)"
one will need  one or zero more lines. In total, that would require
~200-300 lines.

7)

> , so it's very 
> appealing to many of us. But we don't feel that non-experiment HEP 
> computing resources are yet in a state where we can make that C++11 
> requirement without causing pain to many theory users.

Actually the experementalists are even less flexible with the software.
In many cases it is _very_ hard and inconvenient  to install somewhere a
custom version of compiler, boost and so on in the userspace. Some
programs will not work with custom versions at all. And custom versions
for every single library is a direct way to dependency hell. For  many
physics software packages I would prefer to have less features but
easier installation and compatibility.

8)

> For what it's worth, I'm currently using GCC 4.9.2 and Boost 1.55 and it 
> works fine. In the pre-release testing that we do on CERN lxplus we use 
> the system compiler but install our own 1.55 version of Boost.

As far as I understand other versions don't  work. 
GCC 4.9.2 and Boost 1.55 are not default on the lxplus.cern.ch,
bastion.desy.de, gate.rzg.mpg.de, (fnal?) and many others. If it doesn't
work there, one should use custom version.


9)
Anyway,
it looks it works (compiles!) for me with a trivial patch (see
attached).




Best regards,
Andrii




> Cheers,
> Andy
> 
> 
> 
> On 04/08/15 13:05, Andrii Verbytskyi wrote:
> > Dear Andy,
> > I just tried to compile 2.* versions of Rivet on CentOS
> > 7/gcc4.8.3/boost1.53.
> > All those attempts failed, the compiler doesn't accept
> > the Rivet code:
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >    CXX      libRivetCore_la-Run.lo
> > In file included from ../../include/Rivet/Run.hh:5:0,
> >                   from Run.cc:2:
> > ../../include/Rivet/Tools/RivetBoost.hh:16:36: error: declaration of
> > namespace 'boost::BOOST_FOREACH' conflicts with
> >     namespace BOOST_FOREACH = foreach;
> >                                      ^
> > In file included from /usr/include/boost/foreach.hpp:89:0,
> >                   from ../../include/Rivet/Tools/RivetBoost.hh:12,
> >                   from ../../include/Rivet/Run.hh:5,
> >                   from Run.cc:2:
> > /usr/include/boost/foreach_fwd.hpp:56:1: error: previous declaration of
> > namespace 'boost::BOOST_FOREACH' here
> >   {
> >   ^
> > In file included from ../../include/Rivet/Math/MathUtils.hh:5:0,
> >                   from ../../include/Rivet/Math/Math.hh:5,
> >                   from ../../include/Rivet/Tools/Utils.hh:5,
> >                   from ../../include/Rivet/Config/RivetCommon.hh:26,
> >                   from ../../include/Rivet/AnalysisHandler.hh:5,
> >                   from Run.cc:3:
> > ../../include/Rivet/Math/MathHeader.hh:45:16: warning: 'Rivet::MAXINT'
> > defined but not used [-Wunused-variable]
> >     const double MAXINT = std::numeric_limits<int>::max();
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >
> > It looks the reason is a well known (since 4 years!) BOOST bug.
> > 1) Which compilers do you use for tests, i.e. with which compiler Rivet
> > will work?
> > 2) Has anyone tried to compile Rivet with (new)gcc?
> > 3) Is it possible to drop that construction from Rivet? It looks it
> > doesn't appear too often in the code and when it does the replacement is
> > obvious.
> >
> >
> > Best regards,
> > Andrii
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Fri, 2014-12-05 at 14:10 +0100, Andrii Verbytskyi wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >> yes, environment variables are working, however passing arguments via
> >> environment variables is implicit way and implicit way is worse that
> >> explicit. Also, in many cases environment variables will make things
> >> less convenient or even defunct. A good example is using rivet
> >> from a Makefile. One can say the same about using rivet in system() and
> >> so on. Also, the way of setting environment variables depends on shell
> >> --> less convenient usage of rivet even from shell.
> >>
> >>
> >> Best regards,
> >> Andrii
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Fri, 2014-12-05 at 13:00 +0000, Andy Buckley wrote:
> >>> Hi Andrii,
> >>>
> >>> Don't the environment variables work for these? --analysis-path is just
> >>> syntactic sugar for those, and to be honest I was considering removing
> >>> it to clean up the command-line interface!
> >>>
> >>> Andy
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On 05/12/14 12:44, Andrii Verbytskyi wrote:
> >>>> Dear Andy,
> >>>> here are some (hopefully useful) improvements for Rivet.
> >>>>
> >>>> In addition to --analysis-path I think it would be useful to have
> >>>>
> >>>> --ref-path, --info-path, --plot-path.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> So here are the files with the changes. Please note that rivet should be
> >>>> generated from rivet.in with a substitution of install paths.
> >>>>
> >>>> Best regards,
> >>>> Andrii
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> 
> 

-------------- next part --------------
--- ./include/Rivet/Tools/RivetBoost.hh	2015-08-04 15:29:40.510145528 +0200
+++ ./include/Rivet/Tools/RivetBoost.hh	2015-08-04 15:29:40.515145482 +0200
@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@
 #include "boost/utility.hpp"
 
 #include "boost/foreach.hpp"
+/*
 #ifndef foreach
 namespace boost {
   // Suggested work-around for https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/6131
@@ -17,7 +18,8 @@
 }
 #define foreach BOOST_FOREACH
 #endif
-
+*/
+#define foreach BOOST_FOREACH
 namespace Rivet {