[boost] Re: Guidelines for library submissions

From: Beman Dawes (beman_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-03-15 13:53:07

At 08:45 AM 3/15/00 -0600, Ed Brey wrote:

>Regarding the line termination issue, I like the idea of the boost
>library handling all line terminators in a common way.  Unlike other
>formatting issues, tradeoffs for line terminators aren't based on
the
>nature of the program or thinking patterns of the author, but rather
>just the platform on which the file is used.  Since the files are
all
>platform independent, there isn't any reason from a library usage
>standandpoint to have variation between files.  The variations only
>come based on the development platform, which should be transparent
to
>downloaders.  How easy would it be to run a filter over the boost
>library before publishing updates to convert all the line
terminators
>to a single style? As far as what style, since this is a C++
library,
>I say follow the C++ convention and use \n; i.e. LF only.

If I understood the discussion on the C++ committee's core reflector
on the termination issue, the "C++ convention" is simply the
platform's native line termination.

But I do find the rest of your argument to be fairly strong. And LF
is fine with me as a boost convention; AFAIK that is no problem for
Windows or Unix compilers and editors so on these common platforms no
conversion would be required.  Is LF OK for Mac compilers and
editors?  If not, is conversion to the Mac native format a problem?

If boost were to start running a filter over source code, I would
want to publish it (probably a Perl script) so authors could do it
themselves if they wanted their original version to exactly match
what gets posted on boost.

--Beman