Re: [boost] Header dependency table

From: Rene Rivera (grafik666_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-08-08 11:39:29

[2002-08-08] Peter Dimov wrote:

>From: "Beman Dawes" <bdawes_at_[hidden]>
>>  >> "Suppose I'm considering using a Boost library. What other libraries
>> will
>>  >> also have to be installed because the lib I'm interested in is
>> dependent
>>  >on
>>  >> them?
>>  >>
>>  >> That's the question we need to be able to answer, and it seems
library
>>  >> rather than header oriented.
>>  >
>>  >The Boost "install" unit is the header, since there is no way to
>>  >download/install an individual library.
>>
>> IIRC, someone said that to Nico at the time he posed the question.  I
>can't
>> remember the details of the conversation (at the Toronto C++ committee
>> meeting a couple of years ago) but the point made was that it really
isn't
>> about download or install issues, but users wishing to use a portion of a
>> library without being forced to use the whole library.
>
>The fact of life is that currently Boost does not provide a way to obtain a
>component. Users that wish to use a library have to obtain that library
>first. Dependencies come second.
>
>If there is no way to obtain a single library, then a per-library
dependency
>graph doesn't solve the problem.

That's a chicken-and-egg argument. Why do we need it if you can't do it. But
we need if we want to do it.

It's been mentioned many times in the installation of boost context that
users want to install parts of boost. For that matter There was a biref time
myself where I only installed parts of boost (at this point I use too much
of it for that to be usefull).

>There is also the issue with headers shared between several libraries.

Those would tend to become Base headers, if they already aren't.

Having the dependencies would at least point out what functionality might be
better off getting factored out as a separated library because it's used in
many places.

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