Re: [boost] Deprecate BOOST_STATIC_ASSERT?

From: Robert Ramey (ramey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-06-24 12:42:42

Darren Garvey wrote:
> 2008/6/23 David Abrahams <dave_at_[hidden]>:

> It's a pity the mpl macros are so hard to find though. It'd be nice
> if they were documented directly in the static assert docs.

This is the key issue.  For lots of people, the introduction
to generic programming is through STATIC_ASSERT.  This
one facility is very useful and easy to use and understand.  Any
C++ programmer - even a newbie, can grasp the utility
of this facility within minutes.

MPL, though very powerful and useful, takes a significant
amount of investment of effort to understand.  Actually, I
wouldn't expect that anyone in need of such a facility
such as STATIC_ASSERT would even look there unless
he happened to be already familiar with it.

A good solution would be to factor out the MPL ASSERTS
code and documentation into a separate library
(boost/utility/static_assert?).  I don't know if the MPL_ASSERTS
work with compile time constants or just with types.  If its
the latter, then BOOST_STATIC_ASSERT would
be in that same page.  Since this would mostly be moving
around a bunch of stuff that is already done, I would hope
that its not a huge amount of work.  Of course that would
be my perception as I wouldn't be the one doing it.  Oh,
and while we're at it, may we can include BOOST_STATIC_WARNING
in here as well?

Robert Ramey