Version 1.3.0 (12 August 2010)

• New file types
  • fileperblock_syscall/fileperblock_mmap/fileperblock_boostfd/fileperblock_wincall: Use a separate file for each block, which is accessed by means of the underlying file type. The "filename" given is used as a prefix of the block file names. The advantage of these file types is that unused disk space is freed earlier on the file system level.
  • wbtl_file: Do library-based write-combining (good for writing small blocks onto SSDs)
• I/O subsystem
  • separate the disk number of a file (which queue to put requests in) from the fact that blocks for this file are allocated via the block manager (disk number -1 otherwise).
  • separate wait time counting for read and write I/Os
  • wait times can be logged to a separate log file (compile with -DSTXXL_WAIT_LOG_ENABLED and set STXXLWAITLOGFILE in the environment)
• Parallel PQ
  • priority_queue now supports parallelized operations utilizing the libstdc++ parallel mode
• Other new functionality
  • file requests can now be canceled (success not guaranteed), completion handlers are called anyway.
  • log file locations are now configurable by the environment variables STXXLLOGFILE and STXXLERRLOGFILE
  • single queue I/O scheduling
  • reverse_iterator added to containers types vector, deque and map
  • autogrow files (specified in .stxxl by a size of 0), will be deleted on normal program termination
  • add infrastructure to build multiple binaries with different CXXFLAGS from a single source
  • overwriting deleted memfile regions with uninitialized data is now optional (STXXL_CLEAR_FREE_MEMFILE_MEM)
  • read_write_pool that combines prefetch_pool with write_pool and ensures cache coherency
  • add a replaceable exit handler implementation, can be overwritten e.g. for library inclusion
• Many, many bug fixes, in particular concerning
  • priority queue
  • optimal prefetch schedule
  • possible race condition while creating singleton instances
  • random_shuffle()
• Platform Support
  • add GCC 4.4 (parallel mode features not working in GCC 4.3 can now be used)
  • add GCC 4.5
  • initial support for GCC 4.6
  • add ICPC 11.x
  • add Boost 1.42
  • add FreeBSD
  • drop Solaris
• New benchmarks
  • io/benchmark_disks: more command line paramaters for finer testing granularity
  • measure hard-disk and flash-disk combined performance and determine best block size pairs (io/benchmark_disk_and_flash)
  • benchmark using regular STXXL configuration (benchmark_configured_disks)
• Possibly breaking changes
  • API name changes vector::touch -> vector::block_externally_updated
  • Template parameter changes stream::sorted_runs, trigger_entry, trigger_entry_cmp, trigger_entry_iterator
  • Priority of write changes
  • Other name changes (considered internal) typed_block<>::has_filler -> !typed_block<>::has_only_data file::delete_region -> file::discard vector::alloc_strategy -> vector::alloc_strategy_type
  • stxxl::sort(..., M) and stxxl::stream::sort(..., M) now adhere to to the memory limit M more strictly and throw errors instead of overallocating
  • Execute completion handler before notifying waiters, so far after.
• Deprecated methods:
  • stxxl::stats::reset(), stxxl::stats::_reset_io_wait_time(): use stxxl::stats_data instead to store snapshots of the counters and compute differences
• Under-the-hood improvements
  • I/O layer cleanup
  • aligned_alloc
• Doxy now also lists undocumented members
• stop requiring STXXL_ROOT to be a hard coded absolute path set in make.settings.local, a default of CURDIR works fine
• document #defines in defines.h
  • switch on/off file types with STXXL_HAVE_xxx_FILE (to avoid platform compatibility problems)