Re: [boost] Submission: typelist

From: Jeremy Siek (jsiek_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-11-28 01:30:22

On 11/27/01 7:13 PM, "Andrei Alexandrescu" <andrewalex_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> From: "David Abrahams" <david.abrahams_at_[hidden]>
>> From: "Andrei Alexandrescu" <andrewalex_at_[hidden]>
>> To be fair, Andrei, you should compare a version of Loki typelists that
>> works without partial specialization.
> 
> Maybe, but I don't think so. Mpl's whole design is like that. I prefer to
> have a good, simple design that uses partial specialization and then hack to
> it to port it to today's MSVC, rather than putting in place a very
> complicated design that brings no extra power.

However, when a little extra work can be put in to make something work for
VC++, which is the case for type list, we need to do it (as some already
have). The reason is the following situation. Suppose that I'm writing some
large library, and it compiles just fine on VC++. Now say I come to a place
where I need a type list. Will I sacrifice the portability of the whole
library for the sake of reusing the boost type list? No, I'll end up hacking
my own version that works for VC++, which is horrible. So instead let there
be just one hack, the one that makes the boost type list work for VC++.

Cheers,
Jeremy

-- 
Jeremy Siek                          http://www.osl.iu.edu/~jsiek
Ph.D. Student, Indiana Univ. B'ton   email: jsiek_at_[hidden]
C++ Booster (http://www.boost.org)   office phone: [phone]