Re: [boost] boost organization and installation

From: Noel Yap (yap_noel_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-05-04 07:42:32

--- "Victor A. Wagner, Jr." <vawjr_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> <sigh>
> At Thursday 2002/05/02 08:56, you wrote:
> 
> >That's correct, but it does prevent the entire
> package
> >from building correctly.  I think you and I
> disagree
> >on this part.  A CM will never say that a partial
> >build of a product is good to use in production.
> >Would you agree?
> 
> No...and before you write me off as someone who
> hasn't studied the problem, 
> I've been in the biz since 1965 and a CM with that
> attitude is part  of the 
> problem, not part of the solution.

I try not to write anyone off so long as they have
valid points.

> The boost libraries (note the _plural_) happened to
> be packaged together 
> for the convenience of the user community.  I
> personally don't want to 
> download 20+ separate things.

I don't want to download close to 4 MiB when a few
hundred KiB (if even that) would suffice for my needs.

> To push your analogy (partial build is useless) well
> beyond the breaking 
> point, if you were to have a severe accident and
> lost a leg, should the 
> rest of society "put you out of your misery" since
> one part clearly isn't 
> working?
> Of course not, you don't _need_ ALL of your parts to
> be useful.

This analogy is well beyond the breaking point, but I
do understand your view.  I admit that my example was
extremely draconian, but wouldn't you agree that
keeping track of what's changed and what uses what's
changed would be easier with finer granularity of
distribution files for a project whose libraries are
so disparate?  Since this is getting into CM
philosophy (which I think is OT), you may respond
privately.

Anyway, I guess this conversation is kind of moot
since there is now starting an effort to revise the
distrution.  I think both sides (one versus several
dist files) of the debate can be satisfied -- it's
just a matter of how the dist file(s) are built. 
Also, I've been using distribution file and
installation interchangably when they are technically
different.  Maybe the effort can consider allowing
configurable installation of specific parts of Boost
rather than separate distribution files.  What do you
think?

Noel

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