Re: [boost] Phoenix review

Subject: Re: [boost] Phoenix review
From: Joel de Guzman (joel_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-09-26 06:56:27

Robert Jones wrote:
> My (brief) review of Phoenix.
> 
> I vote to accept Phoenix into Boost, and in addition make the
> following comments.

Thank you, Robert.

> 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.

Yes. If Phoenix passes the review, it will be a full fledged
Boost library. It's been long enough for it to be sitting in the
shadow of Spirit. The eventual plan is for it to be the future
Lambda. I'm hopeful that will happen after we iron out some issues
like backward compatibility, etc.

> 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'.

Ok. argN is historical, but if we are to assume Lambda 2.0, then
I think it's best to move to _1 entirely. argN will still be
supported.

> 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.

Sorry about that. That will be fixed for sure. I'll do
some cleanup after the review.

> 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.

Thank you very much.

Regards,
-- 
Joel de Guzman
http://www.boostpro.com
http://spirit.sf.net