Joaquin Lopez Muñoz posted his first bimap
library in 2002. Tons of users have been using it. He then asked
the list for interest in his library in 2003. Luckily, there was
a lot of interest and Joaquin started to boostify the code. At some point
all the developers seemed to agree that, rather than a bidirectional map,
it would be better to work on an N-indexed set that contained Joaquin's
library as a particular case.
2003 - multiindex_set
The library grew enormously and was ready for a formal review in 2003.
At this point, the container was a lot more powerful, but everything comes
with a price and this new beast lacked the simplicity of the original bimap.
2004 - indexed_set
In 2004, the formal review ended well for the new multi-indexed container.
This Swiss army knife introduced several new features, such as non-unique
indexes, hashed indices and sequenced indices. In the list of improvements
to the library, it was mentioned that a bidirectional map should be coded
in top of this container.
2005 - multi_index_container
Once in Boost, the library switched to the now familiar name "Boost.MultiIndex".
Late in 2004, it formally became a member of Boost. Joaquin continued to
enchance the library and added new features such as composite keys and
random-access indices.
2006 - Boost.Bimap
In 2006, during the formal review of Boost.Property_tree, the need for
a bidirectional map container built on top of Boost.MultiIndex arose again.
Boost entered the Google SoC 2006 as a mentor organization at the same
time. Joaquin put himself forward as a mentor. He proposed to build not
only a bidirectional map, but a myriad multi-indexed specialized containers.
Matias Capeletto presented an application to code Boost.Misc for the SoC
and was elected, along with nine other students. You are reading the result
of Matias's and Joaquin's SoC project.
