Re: [boost] [Reminder][Review] The review of the Boost.Guid library

From: Andy (atompkins_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-05-07 13:12:12

Jared McIntyre <jmcintyre_at_[hidden]> wrote in
news:loom.20070507T004550-745_at_[hidden]: 

< snip >

> I'd really like to see the MAC address + time generator. I realize
> that this might be a pain to do in a cross-platform manner, but it
> would make the library more complete in my eyes, and more likely for
> me to recommend it to my colleagues. Is there a way that the library
> could be engineered so that we could provide our own generation
> implementation? 

I agree that it would be very useful to have a time based guid generator.  
I will continue to look in to this.  In the meantime, one could write a 
function to create guids based on anything they want, eg:

boost::guid create()
{
  //generate a guid or values for a guid in the way you want
  //a platform specific call, MAC address+time generator function

  //call a boost::guid constructor with either the values
  //or a string representation of the values
  boost::guid g(guid_string);
  return g;
}

> 
>> - What is your evaluation of the documentation?
> 
> I don't like it's organization. I'd much rather see it start out with
> the Rationale section followed by a simple example of the most likely
> used scenario. I think this is what most users are expecting to see
> who haven't used the library before and want to get started quickly.
> You have to weed into the documentation a while before you run into
> the first generation examples, which is what I think most people will
> be intereste in. If you need to put the "Class guid synopsis" in the
> docs, I'd put it near the end since it is more-or-less a dump of the
> uncommented header file. 

I can reorder the docs if that helps people use the library better.

> 
>> - What is your evaluation of the potential usefulness of the library?
> 
> A good, cross-platform, UUID library is extremely useful. Without the
> guaruntee of uniqueness provided by MAC address + time, it isn't as
> useful for my situation. We have data generated across a large number
> of disconnected computers (I highly doubt there would see a duplicate,
> but in my case, we can't take the risk).

This could also be done in a way using the name-based guid create 
function.

See http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel/154791

< snip >

Andy.