[boost] bcp: towards a library dependency list

From: John Maddock (john_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-02-10 12:25:09

I've just committed some changes to bcp that give it a shortened list 
option:

bcp --list-short

truncates the list so you just see directory names where appropriate, for 
example:

bcp --list-short shared_ptr.hpp

Gives the dependency list:

boost/assert.hpp
boost/checked_delete.hpp
boost/config.hpp
boost/config
boost/current_function.hpp
boost/detail
boost/mpl
boost/non_type.hpp
boost/preprocessor
boost/shared_ptr.hpp
boost/static_assert.hpp
boost/throw_exception.hpp
boost/type.hpp
boost/type_traits
boost/version.hpp

which is reasonably nice and compact :-)

Now, here's the question: what did the folks who were asking for this 
functionality actually want to use the information for?

I should stress that it's overkill for extracting subsets of Boost, because 
many libraries will depend on just one or two files inside boost/mpl or 
boost/preprocessor, so using the list for that purpose will result in an 
even "thicker" dependency than copying with bcp already produces.

It's possible to contract the above list even further: for example by 
contracting to library names where possible, so for example contracting all 
of:

boost/regex.hpp boost/regex libs/regex

to just "regex"

However there would still be a lot of Boost headers that can't automatically 
be assigned to any library name, so it's not clear to me how much use this 
would be?

If folks can give me an idea of what they were looking to use a dependency 
list for it'll help me decide whether to stop here or to continue trying to 
contract the list further.

John.