Re: [boost] [review] Review of Flyweight library begins today January 7

From: Matias Capeletto (matias.capeletto_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-01-25 12:44:20

* What is your evaluation of the design?

Great. I specially like the simplicity of the out of the box version,
that will surely cover most of the uses cases.

I like the current design of configuration parameters.
With respect to Equality semantics, I have no strong opinion about
this particular item. I think that the gain in using the &-version is
too good to be discarded, but I do not like the fact of that small
possibility of a user being surprised by it. A warning box can be put
in the docs or this gain can be activated by the user overloading the
operator== in a per class basis as Joaquin proposed in other thread (A
section will be needed in the docs about this and maybe a macro to
make it easy to activate it).
In the future work section Joaquin talks about an introspection API, I
think this API could be very useful for debugging purpose.

* What is your evaluation of the implementation?

I gave it a quick look. The code is very clean and is already bundle
with the machinery to pass over compiler quirks. I think that is great
how this library rest over the shoulders of other libraries of boost.
It has a very nice test suit too.

* What is your evaluation of the documentation?

Good. It will be cool to have more info about when to use a set
instead of a hashed container for the factory.

{{
Small typo in: tutorial/configuration.html
Tracking policies > no_tracking >
There is some _in some_ reduction in memory usage due to the absence
of reference counters.
}}

* What is your evaluation of the potential usefulness of the library?

High and it will be very easy to use it in started projects. You can
just replace a few definition and start enjoying the benefits of this
library.

* Did you try to use the library? With what compiler?
   Did you have any problems?

The test suit builds fine with gcc 4.1.3, under Linux.

* How much effort did you put into your evaluation?
   A glance? A quick reading? In-depth study?

I have follow the library progress from its beginning.

* Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain?

This problem presents to me some times in the past, too bad this
library was not there yet.

And finally, every review should answer this question:
* Do you think the library should be accepted as a Boost library?
   Be sure to say this explicitly so that your other comments
   don't obscure your overall opinion.

Yes, I think it should be accepted.

Best regards
Matias