Re: [boost] Which libraries in Boost are mature enough to be used in real applications?

From: David Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-05-06 14:19:19

The following message is a courtesy copy of an article
that has been posted to comp.lang.c++.moderated as well.

Wil Evers <bouncer_at_dev.null> writes:

> Guch Wu wrote:
>
>> Boost has many terrific libraries.
>> But I want to know whether they are ready for using in real projects.
>> Which of them are mature enough, or just only in progress?
>
> Good question.  While Boost contains some really great libraries, other
> parts of it have serious problems.

What constitutes a "serious problem" depends on what your needs are.
I'd appreciate it if you could add some detail.

> At the place where I work, we used to reach for Boost for almost anything
> not (yet) available in the standard library.  We don't do that any more,
> because in quite a few cases, we ran into real portability and API
> stability issues.

Could you be more specific, please?

"Portability issues" could mean a lot of things, some of which might
mean nothing to the OP.  For example, if your "portability issue" was
that some Boost library didn't work on a particular pre-standard (or
highly nonconformant) C++ compiler, it might not matter at all to
someone not interested in targeting such compilers.

I'd also like to hear more about what you're calling API stability
issues.

> Instead, we now evaluate each Boost library separately before using it in
> production code.  For some of the Boost libraries, we've actually decided
> to phase out their use at the first available opportunity.  These are:
>
> filesystem
> program_options
> serialization
> test

Because of portability and API stability issues, or for other reasons?

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
www.boost-consulting.com