[boost] Re: ATTN: All Developers Interested in Boost.Preprocessor

From: David Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-04-30 19:43:07

Beman Dawes <bdawes_at_[hidden]> writes:

> At 07:12 AM 4/30/2003, David Abrahams wrote:
>
>  >"Vesa Karvonen" <vesa_karvonen_at_[hidden]> writes:
>  >
>  >> A trivial way to put this into standardeze would be to add a
>  >> translation phase after macro replacement that would convert these
>  >> alternative tokens to their usual representation.
>  >
>  >If it sounds useful to you, it's sounds good to me.  Why not write up
>  >a proposal for the committee?
>
> It seems to me the committee (more particularly, the Evolution Working
> Group) is now more willing to seriously consider small changes to the
> preprocessor. But unless carefully presented, preprocessor changes are
> still likely to face an uphill battle.
>
> To maximize the likelihood of acceptance, consider something like this:
>
> * Implement the feature in Wave, to establish actual implementation
>   experience. Perhaps keep a note of how much added Wave code is
>   required.
>
> * Let Wave users develop some experience with the feature, to find out
>   how useful and robust it is in practice.
>
> * Iterate the above, if the feature isn't quite right yet.
>
> * Do the same for other small PP features.
>
> * Write a unified proposal to the committee leaning heavily on the
>   existing practice that has been developed, with several Boosters as
>   co-authors.

On the other hand, the lack of an implementation or any experience has
not kept the EWG from intensely discussing a proposal for adding macro
scoping, which IMO is a much bigger change than Vesa's proposing**.  It
would seem perverse to refuse to give equal attention to a proposal
like Vesa's which is based the real need of a really heavy user of the
preprocessor.

-Dave

** and which I'm not sure is even addressing a real-world problem.  It
   might be; I am just not sure.

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
www.boost-consulting.com