[boost] Re: Wave C++ Review Begins Today - February 7, 2005

From: Gennadiy Rozental (gennadiy.rozental_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-02-09 00:11:31

> The Wave C++ preprocessor library review begins today
> February 7, 2005.

I obviously did not have chance to look into this submission in details
(though it does seems like a quite an achievement), but I have couple
general questions:

1. Why do we need it?
I mean why do we need it here in boost? I admit there maybe couple dozens
people in a world who are interesting in implementing/use custom C+
preprocessors, but does it make it a widely reusable component? Note I do
not comment on the quality of the submission (I most probably is not
qualified enough to comment on that). After all this library/utility exist
already and available to public.

2. How are we supposed to test this submission (by test I mean: make sure it
works correct)?
The submission package does not include any tests, while with utility of
this complexity, I actually expected compliance testing facilities to exceed
in side the implementation.

3. How are we supposed to comment on implementation?
Beyond a sheer volume of submission (more that 1 meg in headers and
sources), IMHO one needs to be an expert in both Spirit and C++ preprocessor
specification to make any intelligent comments on what is written.

4. Why would you need 500k of headers?
After all public interface should be something around: take this file, parse
it, produce a text output?

Please do not consider above as a negative comments on library by itself, I
just wonder.

Gennadiy