Re: [boost] Boost: containers and allocators

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-05-20 19:34:19

At 09:04 PM 5/19/2001, John Max Skaller wrote:
 >Beman Dawes wrote:
 >>
 >> At 08:08 AM 5/12/2001, John Max Skaller wrote:
 >>
 >>  >I wonder if there is any interest in
 >>  >a boost version of STL containers (and a version
 >>  >of the default allocator) that fixes this problem.
 >
 >> That would be a fairly large effort, and should perhaps be coordinated
 >with
 >> the standards committee.
 >
 >	The problem here is that I think it would be useful
 >if Boost produced a modified version so it could be
 >examined by the committee, in particular, we could report
 >just how hard the change actually was to do. I believe
 >it will be trivial .. but I have not actually done it :-)
 >
 >	If you have some idea how to 'coordinate' this
 >with the committee, I'm listening. I posted a note
 >to the committee reflector. Perhaps boost can wait until
 >there is some comment.

The committee is just now starting to focus on the twin issues of how to 
organize work on an Library Technical Report and how to organize work on 
the next version of the standard.

It isn't at all clear to me where the best home is for experimental 
"impure" extensions (those that affect existing library components) of the 
standard library.  There needs to be some public place where experimenters 
can post ideas and implementations, and then get feedback from 
users.   Otherwise the committee won't have actual experience to back up 
decisions.  Is Boost that place?  I don't know right now.

Matt Austern is a key person (as chair for the committee's library working 
group.)  He is very aware of these issues.  You might want to query him for 
his thinking.

--Beman