Re: [boost] Technical session at the October C++ meeting?

From: John Max Skaller (skaller_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-08-19 12:13:06

Beman Dawes wrote:
> 
> At 08:52 PM 8/16/2001, John Max Skaller wrote:

>  >      Historically, a LOT of interface details of
>  >libraries have been changed.
> 
> While that was certainly true in the past, I'm not sure it will be as true
> in the future.
 
> Those factors (which led to a lot of changes in the proposals) just aren't
> present with the Boost libraries, which are just plain a lot more mature
> than the material the committee had to work with in the past.

        Really? I see smart_ptr being changed today. Thread isn't
even available yet.

> Ensuring proposals were for mature, existing-practice libraries was a 
> major goal and motivation for starting Boost.

        A good idea too.

> What I think fairly likely is that the LWG will put some of the Boost
> libraries in existing headers, will change the names of some headers,
> classes, and functions.
> 
> Some functionality may be struck, particularly if a library provides two
> ways of doing the same thing.

        The committee is capable of doing a kind of analysis that 
boost cannot. With fewer libraries, and more concrete proposals,
WG21 can look at issues like consistency which are much harder to
examine with boost: for example, people actually write formal proposals
for changes. As an example: the _1 or 'arg1' kind of issue is hard
to resolve on boost, but the LWG can resolve it easily, and then make
sure the adopted solution is used consistently.

        I note that there are a lot of libraries on boost --
and I'd be horrified if even half of them were Standardised.
[We'd like to keep it so the document fits on a single CD :-]

-- 
John (Max) Skaller, mailto:skaller_at_[hidden] 
10/1 Toxteth Rd Glebe NSW 2037 Australia voice: 61-2-9660-0850
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