[boost] uBLAS accepted into Boost

From: Ed Brey (brey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-07-09 09:03:37

The uBLAS library has been accepted into Boost.  During the review period, there were 7 unconditional acceptances, 2 conditional acceptances, and no votes for non-acceptance.  The widespread acceptance is a tribute to the elegance of the library that leads to its current level of efficiency and expressiveness.  The conditional acceptances do a good job of highlighting two key aspects of future development that are important for success of the uBLAS library: a commitment to active maintenance and an effort to improve performance.  The review also provided many ideas for improvement of the library.  Here is a highlight summary:

- Naming: What namespace should the library be placed in?  This is an important long-term decision that expands outside the bounds of the uBLAS.  We currently have namespace called "math".  Is "numerics" different enough from "math" to be a worthy sibling (as opposed to a child or dropped in favor of "math")?  Do we need to account for a parallel numerics package, such that we should use the specific name "ublas" rather than general numerics name?

- Type safety: Checks against mixing of different matrix types.

- Performance: uBLAS currently does a good job of minimizing abstraction overhead; however, it can do substantially better by further refining choice of computation mechanism, through intelligent use of ET programming.

- The documentation could use some improvements, specifically more complex examples.

Thanks to the many reviewers who contributed.  And of course, thanks to Joerg and Mathias for all the hard work they put into the library.