Re: [boost] Is Boost.Astronomy feasible?

Subject: Re: [boost] Is Boost.Astronomy feasible?
From: Rush Manbert (rush_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-11-05 18:41:08

I've been thinking about this since I saw the first post on the  
subject. Please excuse my curmudgeonly attitude, but I think this  
should be said.

I would say that adding an astrometry (or astrometry, or astrology for  
that matter) library to Boost is a step in the wrong direction.

Where I work, we use the Boost libraries to develop our commercial  
software. Because we want to "release" official Boost versions into  
our development environment, we build the linkable libraries and check  
them into our source code repository. We also check the header files  
into the repository.

When I do a checkout, the largest amount of time and disk space goes  
to checking out the Boost libraries and headers. I just looked and the  
include/boost directory contains 20,747 files.

In my opinion, the last thing Boost needs is more library binaries and  
more header files for a library that will be of very little general use.

The Boost libraries started out (as near as I can tell) as a way to  
get capabilities into C++ that were left out of the standard. They do  
that admirably, and they are being used as the basis for a lot of C+ 
+0x additions. I love them and I thank the developers from the bottom  
of my heart for what they have created. But there also seems to be a  
tendency to want to throw in everything, including the kitchen sink. I  
would suggest avoiding that and keeping the libraries focused on  
solving programming problems faced by most C++ programmers. I just  
don't think that common astronomy calculations fall into that category.

Just my 2 cents.

- Rush