Re: [boost] But it would Re: [gil] [announcement] New IO lib

From: John Femiani (JOHN.FEMIANI_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-04-26 17:52:37

Jon wrote:
> Tom Brinkman wrote:
> 
> > The trend is for all "new" libraries to be header only, 
> unless there 
> > is an overwhelming, and I mean absolutely overwhelming 
> reason not too.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> > and becouse the filesystem library
> > is is not a header only library, it makes using it by other 
> libraries 
> > very problematic.
> 
> 
> Can you please elaborate on what makes a non-header-only 
> library so very problematic?
> 
> Not to throw gas on the fire, but simply 'Not being "trendy"' 
> is not a cogent argument.
> 

I dont know about Tom, but I personally don't want to wast time
building, linking, and then figuring out why the ABI's were not
compatible if it is not necessary. Especially in boost code that often
has to be 99% inlined because it is generic.  (Hence no significant
build-time speedups would be obtained anyhow)

If all files were header only pages like this:
http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_35_0/more/getting_started/unix-variants.
html
http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_35_0/more/getting_started/windows.html
would be a lot shorter :)

BTW - I think pch is supported in g++ too, and I heard #pragma once is
ok now too..

-- John
-- John