Re: [boost] [Ann] Boost and Google Summer of Code 2007

From: Michael Marcin (mike_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-03-03 15:46:11

Jeff Garland wrote:
>>
>> 1) enhance boost.build itself and
>> 2) provide more convenient (e.g. modular) binary boost packages.
> 
> I mostly agree with this in that a) most boost libs still require no building, 
> b) there's a windows installer now available from boost consulting, c) various 
> *nix systems have binaries available (I can do apt-get on my Linux system one 
> lib at a time for the 'built libs' -- others can use RPMs).
> 
> So given all that is it really worth pursuing this stuff at all?
> 

Yes!  The windows installer and prebuilt binaries are only available on 
some platforms.  My company in particular works on many closed platforms 
that probably cannot be openly supported and tested by Boost.

Even if they were available we wouldn't use them because a prebuilt 
binary removes one the biggest reasons we feel comfortable using Boost. 
   If we find a problem we have the entire source available to us and 
can fix the problem locally without having to depend on arbitrary 3rd 
party. If we don't build that binaries from source we can't be sure 
we'll be able to later if a problem arises.

P.S. IMO Boost is already reasonably modular, portions of MPL, 
Preprocessor, and Type Traits are used by almost every library I've 
needed so far but not much more

- Michael Marcin