Re: [boost] [spirit] Library naming and sub-libraries

Subject: Re: [boost] [spirit] Library naming and sub-libraries
From: Andrey Semashev (andrey.semashev_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-01-03 10:45:20

Joel de Guzman wrote:
> Andrey Semashev wrote:
>> Joel de Guzman wrote:
>>> Andrey Semashev wrote:
>> Look, I'm not arguing that the library name is everything you need to 
>> know about the library. I'm just saying that informative names really 
>> do help to find what you need.
> 
> How about Boost.Any? For the uninitiated, that could contain smart
> pointers. I look at the current names. Only a very few give me
> the enough information to know what they are for. What is assign?
> What is enable_if? What is parameter? asio? ref? variant? mpl?
> units? optional? etc. I wouldn't know by just the names!

Some of them are quite telling (iostreams, variant, filesystem, 
datetime, threads, function, program_options, serialization, should I go 
on?). At least, more telling than Qi. And I repeat myself, the name does 
give a hint on the library purpose, and I find it useful.

I'm not sure what exactly you are trying to convince me in. Is it that 
library names are irrelevant to their domain? Well, we could name 
libraries like GUIDs, at least we would have world-wide unique names. Do 
you think it would make life easier for users? Seriously, I'm not sure 
what we are arguing about.

> If I was looking for a particular library in Boost. I'd look at
> the categories. It's a shame that the current web interface lost
> this very useful page:
> 
>  http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_37_0/libs/libraries.htm#Category

Yes, that's quite a useful page.