[boost] [Typeof] Formal Review in progress

From: Andy Little (andy_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-05-26 05:07:28

Hi All,

A  reminder that the Typeof  Formal Review is currently in progress and runs 
until May 30th. So far there have been only two reviews, both in favour of the 
library. (Thanks again to both those reviewers for their time and energy). 
Nevertheless it would be nice to get some more opinion, affirmation , etc 
regarding this important library. One area in particular that has been cited as 
worthy of improvement is the documentation, so please download the library and 
take a look at it. (And then write a review ;-) ) Are there enough examples? Is 
there enough information regarding how to use the library. Is it workable in a 
large project?. is the effect on compile time a problem.? etc. I'm sure that 
Arkadiy and Peder would welcome feedback on the documentation in particular so 
that they can improve it. So please try to find time to write a review.

The proposed Typeof library emulates the functionality of the non-standard
'typeof' operator,  and incomplete implementations of decltype and the proposed
'auto' declarator , described in
http://www.osl.iu.edu/~jajarvi/publications/papers/decltype_n1478.pdf.
It is commonly acknowledged that this type of functionality is sorely needed
and should be standardardised in the language.

For compliant compilers the library requires some help in the form of
registration macros but, because use of typeof  is by its nature most likely
in generic libraries, it is expected that this can often be done by the library
author rather than the user. In some cases the compilers capabilities (by means
of extensions and even compiler bugs) have been used to remove the need for
registration. However, for portability and in order to test emulation mode on
the compilers where it is available but not used by default (VC7.1, GCC etc),
#define BOOST_TYPEOF_COMPLIANT  [see note  *1*]. Testing the emulation is
useful, even on compilers that provide a better option, to get a rounded view of
the library and its capabilities.

I hope you will find time to write a review of the library, which is available
at: http://boost-sandbox.sourceforge.net/vault/ , typeof.zip

The system has been tested with the following compilers:
MSVC 6.5/7.0/7.1/8.0;     [see note *1* regarding VC7.0 and VC6.5]
GCC 3.4.2

(The following is a quote from :
http://www.boost.org/more/formal_review_process.htm )

Here are some questions you might want to answer in your review:

What is your evaluation of the design?
What is your evaluation of the implementation?
What is your evaluation of the documentation?
What is your evaluation of the potential usefulness of the library?
Did you try to use the library?  With what compiler?  Did you have any problems?
How much effort did you put into your evaluation? A glance? A quick reading?
In-depth study?
Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain?

And finally, every review should answer this question:

Do you think the library should be accepted as a Boost library?  Be sure to say
this explicitly so that your other comments don't obscure your overall opinion.

Andy Little
Typeof review manager

notes:
*1*
MSVC6.5 and VC7.0 are not supported by the BOOST_TYPEOF_COMPLIANT macro