Re: [boost] Phoenix review

Subject: Re: [boost] Phoenix review
From: Robert Jones (robertgbjones_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-09-26 06:44:53

My (brief) review of Phoenix.

I vote to accept Phoenix into Boost, and in addition make the
following comments.
My vote is not dependent on addressing these comments.

I have been using Phoenix for a short time (a few weeks), so cannot comment in
the in-depth manner of Doug and others, but only give some first
impressions as a user.

The library addresses a much needed area of functionality, and seems
to be conceptually
cleaner then BLL. I have found understanding and using it fairly
straight-forward. The
only shortcomings I have encountered are in areas of documentation and ease
of discovery.

I would prefer to see Phoenix presented as an independent library,
rather than as
an aspect of Spirit. It is made clear in the documentation that
Phoenix does stand
alone, but I would prefer to see this made much clearer at higher level.

I would like the equivalence of BLL's _1, _2 etc and Phoenix's arg1,
arg2, etc to be
made clearer in the documentation, and a clear statement whether
Phoenix supports
the _1, _2 style 'out-of-the-box'.

Coming from a cold-start to investigate Phoenix, I found several
different locations,
eg, SourceForge, Boost Subversion, the vault, with old versions (I
think - I never quite
understood what was what!), so I'd like to see everything that's
discarded deleted, and
any relationships between what remains made clear.

Finally, I should not let this opportunity pass without saying what a
magnificent construction
I consider Phoenix to be, despite any minor wrinkles that more
rigorous investigation
might reveal.

- Rob.