Re: [boost] More comments on the Bind library submission?

From: Peter Dimov (pdimov_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-08-16 05:16:47

From: "Matt Austern" <austern_at_[hidden]>
> One of my colleagues, John Wilkinson, has come up
> with what he describes as a "lightweight bind
> library".  It provides less functionality than the
> boost version, but it also has much smaller headers
> and much smaller compilation times.  I'm not sure
> which is a better set of tradeoffs.

The bind headers are large, but self-contained. Other boost libraries have
smaller "main" headers but relatively many dependencies, so the end result
is about the same, if not larger.

The size of the library is mainly due to the support of up to nine
arguments. The maximum number of arguments is not enshrined in the
specification; it's supposed to be an implementation quantity (as in annex
B.) The reference implementation supports so many arguments for two reasons:

* it's much easier to scale down a 9-arg version than to scale up a 2-arg
version;
* a proof of concept is needed that implementation difficulty scales
linearly with the number of arguments.

--
Peter Dimov
Multi Media Ltd.