[boost] [Boost Review] Property Tree Library

From: Tom Brinkman (reportbase_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-04-21 22:22:35

I'm voting NO on "property tree".  I'm not persuaded that this library
should be added to boost.  Here is my review:

*  What is your evaluation of the design?

Interesting.  The "Property Tree" library attempts to meet a real need that
I have had.

The design appears to be appears to be adequate
at first, but the more time
I spent with working through the examples, the less I liked it.

* What is your evaluation of the implementation?

I think the implementation is pretty good.  Overall, the
author(s) have utilized
modern c++ and established boost's "best-practices",
including using boost::spirit for the "xml" parser.
I'm not sure why he didn't use boost::spirit or
boost::xpressive for the
other parsers though.

* What is your evaluation of the documentation?

Inadequate, at least compared to the better documented boost libraries.
More work is need here.

* What is your evaluation of the potential usefulness of the library?

Each individual part of the library is very useful.

* Did you try to use the library?  With what compiler?  Did you have any
problems?

gcc.   No problems.

* How much effort did you put into your evaluation? A glance?
A quick reading? In-depth study?

I studied documentation and the source code for a couple of hours.  There is
variety of interesting stuff hidden in this library.
I ran the examples and created a couple of my own.

* Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain?

Yes

* Do you think the library should be accepted as a Boost library?

No

I'm voting NO on "property tree".  I'm not persuaded that this library
should be added to boost.

It should be broken up into seperate boost::spirit or boost::xpressive
grammers and submitted seperately. Grouping all this stuff under the
"property tree" library is convenient, but not up to the standards of a
boost library.