[boost] Header file dependencies

From: Edward Diener (eddielee_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-09-22 22:14:00

I started a thread about a month ago mentioning that the header file
dependencies were out of date. Has there been any work to bring them up to
date ?

I think a good other way to specify dependencies is to make a tree of what
general implementations are dependent on other general implementations, and
then list all of the header files for a given implementation. This would
allow someone distributing a particular implementation with their code,
let's take boost::function as an example, to also distribute all the header
files for the implementations which boost::function uses ( and of course
recursively for any of those other implementations ), and would give
distributors a fighting chance of successfully distributing something less
than the entire Boost header files. I realize that config and its header
files must be distributed with everything, but I don't think it should be
necessary to have to ditsribute all of the headers each time a small number
of implementations are used.

An example of such a useful tree format, would be:

boost::function
  boost::mem_fn
  boost::xxx
  etc.
    boost::function header file
    etc.

boost::mem_fn
  boost::yyy
  etc.
    boost::mem_fn header file
    etc.

etc.

Such a tree would have the minimum amount of redundancy, but by following
through starting at a particular implementation, one could know what header
files to distribute, even if one distributed a few extra header files for a
particular implementation which might not be needed by actual usage. I
consider this type of dependency tree easier for the purposes of
distribution than an accurate header-by-header tree, and it should certainly
be easier to create for users of Boost implementations.