RE: [boost] Submission policy

From: Gary Powell (Gary.Powell_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-05-08 11:02:00

Re: Portability,

I'd hate to have a library rejected because a major vendor of a non
compliant C++ compiler can't compile it. The hard part about portability, is
that its great in theory, and hard in practice, i.e. It's difficult to spot
the platform dependencies until you actually port the code.

I'd like to claim that if a library can be compiled by two compilers on two
different platforms, that a basic level of portability has been achieved.
Even if I never get to use a library at least I'll have it to use as a club
with the compiler vendors, as in "Can your compiler compile the boost
library XYZ?"

As for acceptance into the standard, those two compilers and platforms need
to have a large audience so we can have a good trial of actual use of the
library.   Then the C++ standard library committee can decide whether its
worth adding the code to the standard.  After all there is a lot to be said
for having a small standard and a large body of useful tools/libraries. Of
course my libraries should be part of the standard because they are great..
:>

On the risk that my own submissions won't be accepted, I'd also like to
propose, that at least one person, possibly two need to nominate a library,
and those two people can't be the original authors. This way we can see that
at least someone other than the one resident expert recognizes the value of
a library. Face it, if you can't get at least two people interested it
probably doesn't belong in the standard.

I further propose that we have a links page, which we put links to libraries
which we like but don't want on the boost page. (i.e. too narrow in scope,
only work on single platforms, have restrictive licenses, need perfect
compilers etc.) That way more people will use boost as a first source for
their C++ library needs.

-gary-

gary.powell_at_[hidden]