[boost] Re: Namespaces vs. directory placement (was: Re: [iostreams]Version of Iostreams compatible with 1.32 available)

From: Jonathan Turkanis (technews_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-12-20 20:58:56

Daryle Walker wrote:
> On 12/10/04 2:44 AM, "Joaquín Mª López Muñoz" <joaquin_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
>> Hi Jonathan, some quick observations:
>>
>> * Some of your includes still refer to <boost/io/...> instead of
>> <boost/iostreams/...> (most notably, the examples). Am I missing
>> something?
> [TRUNCATE]
>
> I looked at some code.  Files are in the "boost/iostreams/..."
> directory, but the items are in the "boost::io::..." namespace.
> We're trying to keep the directory and namespace hierarchies in line
> so it's easy for users to find stuff.  The policy started from the
> base header directory getting too many direct entries for easy
> searching.

The main reason Jeff recommended that I switch to the "iostreams" directory,
IIRC, was that it would be difficult to merge our documentation: either the
state-savers would get lost as a small component of the iostreams library, or we
would have to have an introductory page with links to both libraries.

I would greatly prefer to use the namespace  "boost::io" because:

   (i) it is much shorter than "boost::iostreams"; while it is possible to use
an alias to shorten it, I'd hate to make users do this when there is a perfectly
suitable short name available.
   (ii) there currently are not many declarations in the namespace "boost::io",
so there is not much chance of collisions
   (iii) it is a more accurate discription of the library, since the core
infrastructure is independent of the standard iostreams library and might be
used without streams, e.g., for async i/o.

I also don't think finding the iostreams library or its namespace will be a
serious problem.

Therefore, unless there is a very convincing reason to enforce the policy that
namespaces match directories in this particular case, I'd like to use
"boost::io".

Best Regards,
Jonathan