Re: [boost] asio review results -- asio accepted

From: David Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-03-22 11:08:44

Jeff Garland <jeff_at_[hidden]> writes:

> All -
>
> I'm pleased to announce that asio has been accepted into Boost.  

Thanks for completing what must've been a difficult review judgement,
Jeff.

> As usual with a Boost review, the asio review generated plenty of
> discussion, issues, and controversy.  Comments ranged from high
> praise, including success stories of projects in production, to
> serious design concerns and issues.  On balance, in my judgment,
> asio provides a generally solid library that is ready for inclusion
> into the Boost library -- providing key functionality in an area
> that developers have a strong need.
>
> Of course, like anything else, asio is not perfect -- a number of key 
> issues were uncovered during the review.  In terms of required changes 
> I'm only going to cite a few:
>
> - Fixes to dynamic memory allocation issues
> - Interface changes to support ipv4 and ipv6 seamlessly at runtime
> - Improvements to support strongly typed socket interfaces

If you're only citing a few of the required changes, where is the
complete list?  Keeping it out of public view doesn't make any sense
to me.

> Chris has communicated a couple possible solutions to the memory 
> allocation issue and I'll ask that the interface and other changes for 
> this issue continue to be discussed on the Boost list so consensus can 
> be achieved on the best resolution.
>
> Other key improvements that should be explored as future enhancements 
> include:
>
> - Possible removal of some of the c-style interfaces
> - Exploration of higher level iostream integrations
> - Performance improvements
> - Improved documentation (wouldn't be Boost w/o this one)
>
> Chris has a much longer list of changes garnered from the review and is 
> well on his way to addressing many of them.
>
> Note that there were several threads and discussions about performance, 
> which is particularly critical for the domain covered by asio. One of 
> the performance issues is the dynamic memory allocation issue cited 
> above.  In general, the reviewers have extremely high expectations here. 
> However, after reviewing the discussion and library it's my belief that 
> many developers will find asio performance sufficient to build 
> significant projects with only the memory allocation changes. I expect 
> Chris will be able to address some of the other performance issues cited 
> by reviewers in asio over time.

Are these issues addressable as an implementation detail, or will it
cause an interface change?

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
www.boost-consulting.com