Re: [boost] Suggested coding guidelines

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-07-03 15:25:05

At 12:50 PM 7/3/2001, David Abrahams wrote:
 >
 >----- Original Message -----
 >From: "Jeff Paquette" <paquette_at_[hidden]>
 >
 >> Include guards can and are also used to prevent the header from being
 >> reparsed (as suggested by Lakos). As such, it (IMHO) would be better if
 >the
 >> guard referenced the file name.
 >>
 >> I'd rather write:
 >>
 >> #if !defined(BOOST_XXX)
 >> #include "boost/xxx"
 >> #endif
 >>
 >> than
 >>
 >> #if !defined("68C2D2A0-6FD1-11d5-8F0C-00105AC8B6E1")
 >> #include "boost/xxx"
 >> #endif
 >
 >This practice is unreliable with most headers. For example, you can't do
 >that with your system headers if you're writing portable code. Most
 >standard
 >and 3rd party libraries don't document their #include guard conventions, 
so
 >you have to look inside the header to determine what guard they used -- 
and
 >there's no guarantee they won't change it.
 >
 >We could of course establish such a convention with boost headers, but I 
am
 >unconvinced of the benefits.

No, I don't think we want to encourage such flaky code.

It is OK for a small, tightly controlled project to rely on specific 
#include guard conventions, but for diverse project like Boost, we don't 
want to become dependent on a set of include conventions.

--Beman