Re: [boost] Status of thread safe signals?

From: Frank Mori Hess (frank.hess_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-03-18 14:12:14

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On Tuesday 18 March 2008 10:24 am, Jeff Garland wrote:
> Why does it require a review -- isn't this just an extension of an existing
> library?

I'm not sure exactly where the threshold is for needing a review, so I'll just 
list some reasons it might need one.

* There is an author change, and the new author (me) has never submitted a lib 
to boost before.  A few of the headers in thread_safe_signals did start as 
copies of boost.signals headers, but it's mostly a new implementation.  

* The scheme for managing connections is different, people should probably 
have an opportunity to disparage it before it gets forced on them.  There are 
also some new classes for supporting postconstructors/predestructors (which 
may not be needed after all, if I can get my changes to 
shared_ptr/enable_shared_from_this accepted).

* It's not fully backwards compatible.  I dropped the old connection 
management scheme (boost::trackable and visit_each) entirely.  It could be 
made to be (almost) fully backward compatiible for source code, if that's 
deemed necessary.  However, it's also been pointed out that now may be a good 
time to do some namespace and header location rearrangement to bring signals 
more into line with current boost policies.  Actually, I'm already aware that 
some of my new classes (postconstructible/deconstruct_ptr/etc.) that I dumped 
into the boost namespace should be moved.  It might be worth considering 
continuing to provide the old boost.signals library for a transition period, 
moving thread_safe_signals into a new namespace/header location entirely? 

* thread_safe_signals is header-only, boost.signals is not.  I'm sure some 
people will see this as a change for the worse.

In any case, I'm certainly not in a position to start ripping out 
boost.signals and replacing it with my code, until there has been some kind 
of review or blessing given to me to do so.  Doug gave encouragment to embark 
on the project originally, but I don't think he's ever given any official 
stamp of approval to the final implementation.

- -- 
Frank
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