Re: [boost] Filesystem Library: Formal Review

From: Vladimir Prus (ghost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-09-23 07:38:19

William Kempf wrote:
> The formal review for the Filesystem Library starts today and ends Sept. 
> 23.  I'm the review manager, and Beman Dawes is the submitter.  
> Guidelines on forma reviews can be found at 
> http://www.boost.org/more/formal_review_process.htm.

With all the discussions on Filesystem library I nearly missed the fact 
that the review period ends today. There's my comments, which are based 
on reading all the docs and using the path.hpp component in all 
applicable places of my programs.

I vote for inclusion of the library and agree that it would add quite a 
lot. Thanks for this work, Beman!

Here's the list of things I'd like improved:

- I strongly think that the second argument of "<<" (or "/") operator 
may not be absolute path and it should be checked. Otherwise, many 
errors go undetected. I also like Thomas Witt's proposal for separate 
root notion.

- More fine-grained exceptions

- Some functionality to deal with making paths absolute. I'm not 
particular about detail but the functionality I want is:

    - Function 'root (const path& p, const path (or root) & r)
      which would return 'p' unchanged if it is self-contained,
      and will interpret it as relative to 'r' otherwise.
      This is the same as two argument form of 'absolute'.

    - Some way to pass current directory as the second argument of
      'root'. Maybe, one argument form can be used for that. I slightly
      lean towards an explicit 'current_directory'.

- Maybe, some more functions (no desperate need at the momemnt):

     - something like 'realname' in POSIX (returns name after resolving
        all symbollic links)

     - some form of file locking (when docs say that other processes
       may change filesystem state locking comes to mind immediately).

- Volodya