[boost] Re: Re: Comeau general comments

From: Greg Comeau (comeau_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-07-10 13:32:01

In article <0cea01c2280c$78757f40$6601a8c0_at_[hidden]>,
David Abrahams <boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>From: "Greg Comeau" <comeau_at_[hidden]>
>> >I'm not sure this one is such a great idea.
>>
>> Initial support was added yesterday.
>> As we understand boost further, this will be completed.
>>
>> >It would be much better to
>> >provide generalized non-boost-specific support for build systems to add
>> >include paths in the right places, IMO.
>>
>> It's not necessarily instead of that, but in addition to that.
>> IOWs, neither are great ideas, nor bad ideas, just quality of
>> implementation issues in handling the different preferences that
>> people have in doing this kind of thing.  I need to accomodate
>> people who have no interest in build systems, as well as those
>> who do, and then some, why is that a problem?
>
>Boost doesn't require any special support from compilers to get #include
>directories into the command-line, but if you want to spend resources on
>that I guess I can't stop you.

The capability mentioned won't require it either, just provide
another way of achieving it.

There's a substantial number of people who want it this way
(we know from other non-boost work, but also from specific requests
we've gotten for boost -- it's one of the reasons I'm here)
and also people who need it this way (they are on small systems, etc).
As well, it gives some novices a way of getting up to speed
immediately, who would otherwise be complete out of the picture
(I hope general boost philosophy is to support novices.)

>I do worry a little that people who have
>trouble getting your "boost-specific" feature to work will come to us
>instead of you for support, but that's a minor issue.

I would think said machinery would result in less such requests.
BTW, we already have the opposite (people come to us for
boost-specific support).  It would therefore make sense, to me,
that we should strive to accomodate "both" (actually, I suspect
there is more than 2 groups of people) sides, and where that
is not possible, work out a compromise.  I feel this
should be the case even w/o the above feature.

>An area you might
>look at, if you're interested in supporting boost well,
>is automatically generating specializations for some of
>the type traits library templates, such as has_trivial_destructor<>.

I have multi-motivations for being here.   Getting feedback
such as this suggestion is one of them.   I would be glad
to see a more complete list like this suggestion.  I can't
promise it would all be addressed ASAP, but over the
long haul, this seems like it would be helpful.
-- 
Greg Comeau       4.3.0 NEWS: New Windows Backends + 'export' IN July!
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