Dirk Eddelbuettel: BH 1.84.0-1 on CRAN: New Upstream
Boost is a very large and
comprehensive set of (peer-reviewed) libraries for the C++ programming
language, containing well over one hundred individual libraries. The BH package provides a
sizeable subset of header-only libraries for (easier, no linking
required) use by R. It is fairly
widely used: the (partial) CRAN mirror logs (aggregated from the cloud
mirrors) show over 35.7 million package downloads.
Version 1.84.0 of Boost was released in December following the
regular Boost release schedule of April, August and December releases.
As the commits and changelog show, we packaged it almost immediately and
started testing following our annual update cycle which strives to
balance being close enough to upstream and not stressing CRAN and the
user base too much. The reverse depends check revealed five packages
requiring changes or adjustments which is a pretty good outcome given
the over three hundred direct reverse dependencies. So we opened issue #100 to
coordinate the issue over the winter break during which CRAN also closes
(just as we did in previous years). Our sincere thanks to the two
packages that already updated before, and to the one that updated today
within hours (!!) of the BH uploaded it needed.
There are very few actual changes. We honoured one request (in issue #97) to
add Boost
QVM bringing quarternion support to R. No other new changes needed to
be made. A number of changes I have to make each time in BH, and it is worth
mentioning them. Because CRAN cares about backwards compatibility and
the ability to be used on minimal or older systems, we still
adjust the filenames of a few files to fit a jurassic constraints of
just over a 100 characters per filepath present in some long-outdated
versions of tar. Not a big deal. We also, and that is more
controversial, silence a number of #pragma diagnostic
messages for g++ and clang++ because CRAN
insists on it. I have no choice in that matter. One warning we
suppressed last year, but no longer do, concerns the C++14 standard that
some Boost libraries now default to.
Packages setting C++11 explicitly will likely get a note from CRAN
changing this; in most cases that should be trivial to remove as we only
had to opt into (then) newer standards under old compilers. These days
newer defaults help; R itself now defaults to C++17.
Via my CRANberries, there is aChanges in version 1.84.0-0 (2024-01-09)
diffstat report relative to the previous
release. Comments and suggestions about BH are welcome via the issue
tracker at the GitHub
repo.
If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can now sponsor me at
GitHub.
This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.
I ve mentioned this in a
The Rcpp Core Team is once again thrilled to announce a new release
1.0.12 of the 
This year was hard from a personal and work point of view, which impacted the amount of Free Software bits I ended up doing - even when I had the time I often wasn t in the right head space to make progress on things. However writing this annual recap up has been a useful exercise, as I achieved more than I realised. For previous years see 
CW for body size change mentions
I needed a corset, badly.
Years ago I had a chance to have my measurements taken by a former
professional corset maker and then a lesson in how to draft an underbust
corset, and that lead to me learning how nice wearing a well-fitted
corset feels.
Later I tried to extend that pattern up for a midbust corset, with
success.
And then my body changed suddenly, and I was no longer able to wear
either of those, and after a while I started missing them.
Since my body was still changing (if no longer drastically so), and I
didn t want to use expensive materials for something that had a risk of
not fitting after too little time, I decided to start by making myself a
summer lightweight corset in aida cloth and plastic boning (for which I
had already bought materials). It fitted, but not as well as the first
two ones, and I ve worn it quite a bit.
I still wanted back the feeling of wearing a comfy, heavy contraption of
coutil and steel, however.
After a lot of procrastination I redrafted a new pattern, scrapped
everything, tried again, had my measurements taken by a dressmaker
[#dressmaker], put them in the draft, cut a first mock-up in cheap
cotton, fixed the position of a seam, did a second mock-up in denim
[#jeans] from an old pair of jeans, and then cut into the cheap
herringbone coutil I was planning to use.
And that s when I went to see which one of the busks in my stash would
work, and realized that I had used a wrong vertical measurement and the
front of the corset was way too long for a midbust corset.
Luckily I also had a few longer busks, I basted one to the denim mock up
and tried to wear it for a few hours, to see if it was too long to be
comfortable. It was just a bit, on the bottom, which could be easily
fixed with the Power Tools
I could have been a bit more precise with the binding, as it doesn t
align precisely at the front edge, but then again, it s underwear,
nobody other than me and everybody who reads this post is going to see
it and I was in a hurry to see it finished. I will be more careful with
the next one.
I also think that I haven t been careful enough when pressing the seams
and applying the tape, and I ve lost about a cm of width per part, so
I m using a lacing gap that is a bit wider than I planned for, but that
may change as the corset gets worn, and is still within tolerance.
Also, on the morning after I had finished the corset I woke up and
realized that I had forgotten to add garter tabs at the bottom edge.
I don t know whether I will ever use them, but I wanted the option, so
maybe I ll try to add them later on, especially if I can do it without
undoing the binding.
The next step would have been flossing, which I proceeded to postpone
until I ve worn the corset for a while: not because there is any reason
for it, but because I still don t know how I want to do it :)
What was left was finishing and uploading the 
Lately I ve seen people on the internet talking about victorian crazy
quilting. Years ago I had watched a 
I cut a 
For the second piece I tried to use a piece of paper with the square
grid instead of drawing it on the fabric: it worked, mostly, I would not
do it again as removing the paper was more of a hassle than drawing the
lines in the first place. I suspected it, but had to try it anyway.
Then I added a lining from some plain black cotton from the stash; for
the slit I put the lining on the front right sides together, sewn
at 2 mm from the marked slit, cut it, turned the lining to the back
side, pressed and then topstitched as close as possible to the slit from
the front.
I bound everything with bias tape, adding herringbone tape loops at the
top to hang it from a belt (such as one made from the waistband of one
of the donor pair of jeans) and that was it.
I like the way the result feels; maybe it s a bit too stiff for a
pocket, but I can see it work very well for a bigger bag, and maybe even
a jacket or some other outer garment.
Now copy the ISO image to the newly created instance and extract
its data:
Login the recovery console (root without password) and fix its default route to
make it reachable:
Being able to use this procedure for complete disaster recovery within Hetzner
cloud VPS (using off-site backups) gives me a better feeling, too.
For the purposes of what I m trying to fix, there are two paths that matter.
One of the knitting projects I m working on is a big bottom-up
triangular shawl in less-than-fingering weight yarn (NM 1/15): it feels
like a cloud should by all rights feel, and I have good expectations out
of it, but it s taking forever and a day.
And then one day last spring I started thinking in the general direction
of top-down shawls, and decided I couldn t wait until I had finished the
first one to see if I could design one.
For my first attempt I used an odd ball of 50% wool 50% plastic I had in
my stash and worked it on 12 mm tree trunks, and I quickly made
something between a scarf and a shawl that got some use during the
summer thunderstorms when temperatures got a bit lower, but not really
cold. I was happy with the shape, not with the exact position of the
increases, but I had ideas for improvements, so I just had to try
another time.
Digging through the stash I found four balls of Drops Alpaca in two
shades of grey: I had bought it with the intent to test its durability
in somewhat more demanding situations (such as gloves or even socks),
but then the LYS
I m glad that I did it, however, as it s still soft and warm, but now
also looks nicer.
The pattern is of course online as #FreeSoftWear on 
Figure 1: Content-Security-Policy browser communication
This is revolutionary, because it allows servers to receive feedback
in real time on errors that may be appearing in the browser s console.
This post should have marked the beginning of my yearly roundups of the favourite books and movies I read and watched in 2023.
However, due to coming down with a nasty bout of flu recently and other sundry commitments, I wasn't able to undertake writing the necessary four or five blog posts In lieu of this, however, I will simply present my (unordered and unadorned) highlights for now. Do get in touch if this (or any of my previous posts) have spurred you into picking something up yourself
