Re: [boost] Proposal: Identifying libraries

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-12-16 14:54:43

At 01:10 PM 12/16/2002, Peter Dimov wrote:

 >From: "Beman Dawes" <bdawes_at_[hidden]>
 >> At 11:15 AM 12/16/2002, Douglas Gregor wrote:
 >>  >Sounds good. I think we should try to do the conversion 
automatically,
 >at
 >>
 >>  >least for all files in subdirectories (e.g., the file 
boost/xxx/yyy.hpp
 >>  >would be assumed to be a part of library xxx if libs/xxx exists) and
 >for
 >>  >files boost/xxx.hpp where there is a library in libs/xxx. We don't 
want
 >>  >to do this conversion by hand :)
 >>
 >> Good point! I'll whack together a little program to do the above (after
 >> waiting awhile to make sure such a change is acceptable to others.)
 >
 >I agree with the general intent of the proposal (in fact I've been using
 >direct links to the .html file with the documentation for some time now)

I've also been doing that too in my non-Boost code for several years. 
Originally I had an IDE plugin to invoke a web browser when clicked, but of 
course program editors now have that as a builtin feature. Works great.

 >but how does this affect (implementation detail) headers that aren't
 >necessarily part of a specific library? 
boost/detail/lightweight_mutex.hpp,
 >boost/assert.hpp, boost/throw_exception.hpp, for example.

Good question.  It seems to me every header should have a home 
library.  Probably "utility" for your examples.

If "utility" accumulates several entries in a given category, as has 
already happened with iterators-related stuff, we should then move those 
components to their own library.

Note that while I agree with Doug that it would be easier to initially set 
up as many files as possible automatically, that is just a labor saving 
initialization. It isn't meant to override Boost developer wishes.

--Beman