Version 1.4.0 (12 December 2013)

• Reorganized Directory Hierarchy
  • separating old component based directories into lib/ (libstxxl source files), tests/ (for tests cases), examples/ (for tutorial and example code) and tools/ (for stxxl_tool and more benchmarks).
• CMake build system for cross-platform compilation
  • replaced adhoc Makefiles with CMake build system
  • CMake scripts can also output MSVC project files and more.
  • all component tests must register with CMake's test system -> run make test
  • generates pkg-config and CMake's project config files
• Greatly Improved Doxygen Documentation
  • integrated old LaTeX tutorial
  • newly written tutorials for almost all STXXL containers and algorithms
  • embedded design documentation from Roman Dementiev's PhD thesis
  • new compilation instructions for CMake build system
• Improved .stxxl Config Options for File I/O Implementations
  • looking for .stxxl in more places than just the current directory (see the docs for which places exactly).
  • parse file size with SI and IEC units, like "10GiB" in disk= config lines.
  • parse additional file I/O implementation options.
  • support for "unlink_on_open" (keep file descriptor but unlink file) and "delete_at_exit" options.
  • support for "direct=off/try/on" to turn off O_DIRECT for tmpfs and similar.
  • the default open mode is now direct=try -> prints a warning if O_DIRECT is unavailable on the system.
• .stxxl Config Options Represented as disk_config Class
  • all disk= config lines are parsed into disk_config objects.
  • allow API calls to configure disks via stxxl::config::add_disk()
  • delay config file load till config::initialize() is called by block_manager
• Command line parser stxxl::cmdline_parser
  • stand-alone command line parser with ability to parse SI and IEC units for "bytes sizes".
  • automatically output nicely formatted help for all options and flags.
  • using the cmdline_parser for all stxxl_tool subtools.
• Created stxxl_tool from multiple small tools and benchmarks
  • stxxl_tool is a collection of subtools, previous scattered around in the directory hierarchy.
  • goal is to have one tool installed in binary distribution together with libstxxl library and includes.
  • primary tool for standardized platform speed tests.
  • provide good command line help on these subtools via cmdline_parser.
• Adding skew3 as "real-world" STXXL application to examples subdirectory.
  • enhanced integrated stxxl::tuple construction for this application.
• Enable use of raw block devices on Linux
  • these do provide more stable I/O throughput than even XFS.
  • disable growing of these devices
• Most platform configuration is now done by CMake and saved into the <stxxl/bits/config.h> header file
• Enhanced stxxl::block_manager to count maximum, current and total number of bytes allocated in external memory.
• Support Visual Studio 2012 and 2013 without Boost by using std::thread
  • VS 2012 and 2013 support STL threads, mutexes, condition_variables and more, which are basically modeled after the Boost libraries. Thus we can simply uses these included libraries instead of Boost.
  • Fixed bad runtime deadlock bug occurring when joining std::threads after main() exits. The bug persists in VS 2012 and 2013.
• Implementing counting_ptr reference counted objects
  • used like boost::intrusive_ptr with a base class.
  • reimplementing request_ptr using just counting_ptr.
  • (optionally) use atomic operations for thread-safe reference counting
  • applying counting_ptr to stream::sorted_runs to avoid extra copying
• New STXXL container "stxxl::sequence"
  • basically a deque container without random access to blocks.
  • efficient {push/pop}_{front/back} at both ends.
  • access to block sequence via stream and reverse_stream constructions
• New STXXL container "stxxl::sorter"
  • combination of stream::runs_creator and stream::runs_merger into a convenient sorting container.
• Added vector_bufreader and vector_bufwriter to overlapping I/O and computation when accessing a stxxl::vector in scanning mode.
  • documented problems of scanning in a vector
  • C++11 range loop access support to stxxl::vector via vector_bufreader.
• Added uint40 and uint48 types for integers with five and six bytes.
• Adding STXXL_CHECK macros to always check outcomes in tests.
• Renaming mng/mng.{h,cpp} -> mng/block_manager.{h,cpp}.
• Reworking version.h
  • add integer version like 10400 for 1.4.0
  • add get_version_string() for longer version string with features
  • check_library_version() for mismatch between headers and libraries
• Reworking error_handling.h to throw much more useful exceptions with errno information and more.
• Various file renames (which are only possible at major version changes).
• Fixing bug in shrinking vector with vector::resize(n,true).