Re: [boost] Deprecate BOOST_STATIC_ASSERT?

From: Robert Ramey (ramey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-06-21 00:33:24

David Abrahams wrote:
> I think <radical-idea>it's time to deprecate
> BOOST_STATIC_ASSERT</radical-idea>

or at *least* put a prominent note
> in its documentation directing people at the BOOST_MPL_ASSERT macros.

I think there is a deeper problem here.

There are a number of facilities which are used in boost
whose documentation and purpose are hard to find.  In
particular I refer to things like:

assert vs BOOST_ASSERT
BOOST_STATIC_ASSERT vs BOOST_MPL_ASSERT
a few "exception", throw_exception, etc.

I recently had to find something to do with some
aspect of exception and I had to search around
and finally decifer the source code.

There is
some documentation in boost "rationale"
about things like "throw" specifications.  I think
it would be very valuable to update a few of
these documents.  (another one that is really out of
date is "how to write documentation for boost".
I suspect that lots people look at other boost code
for answers to questions.  I think improving the
documents which address these questions would
go along way toward changing the practice.

It would never occur to me to look into the MPL
library for a replacement for BOOST_STATIC_ASSERT.

And since MPL is and "advanced" library -
most users aren't going to become familiar with it
until they already spend a significant amount of
time with boost.

Oh  - Of course I see now  what I really want to
use is the Boost concept library.  But its not clear
to me that this is not in a state of flux.

In this specific case, I changed BOOST_STATIC_ASSERT
to BOOST_STATIC_WARNING - which suffers
from the same problem but may be better for
some users.

Maybe you might re-implement BOOST_STATIC_ASSERT
in terms of BOOST_MPL_ASSERT - I don't know
if that would help.

Is there a BOOST_MPL_WARNING?

Robert Ramey