Re: [boost] GGL Review

Subject: Re: [boost] GGL Review
From: Barend Gehrels (barend_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-11-16 06:02:50

Hi Phil,

Thanks for your review. Let me clarify a few points:

Phil Endecott wrote:
> - The library doesn't seem to be in namespace boost.  I guess the 
> intention is to add this later.  This is unusual.
> - I got a page full of warnings from my test program; the cause seemed 
> to be unused parameters in within.hpp, lines 118 and 178.  Since I 
> have touched only a small fraction of the library, I imagine there are 
> other places with the same issue.
> As I said, these are minor issues that I imagine could be corrected 
> quickly.  However they did give me the impression that the library is 
> still very much a work-in-progress - especially the documentation - 
> rather than a fully-formed finished work.  I don't necessarily believe 
> that a library has to be perfect before it can be accepted into Boost, 
> but I think it needs to be a little less rough around the edges than 
> this.
> At this time, the library is let down by incomplete documentation, and 
> I feel it should be rejected for that.

Our library is used by people. We have a mailing list, a wiki and there 
is a user base.

Therefore:

- it is not in namespace boost. The preparation of Formal Review took 
several months. We cannot surprise our users with adding namespace 
boost, and after rejection removing it. Besides that, I've asked this on 
the list because I didn't feel comfortable publishing a library with 
namespace boost, while not being accepted. Dave Abrahams answered: 
"Thank you very much for being so responsible." and about using before 
acceptance: "However, I'm neither encouraging nor discouraging that 
practice."

- this is also the case for macro definitions, we didn't want to start 
with BOOST for them.

- and this is actually also part of the issue of documentation:

You are right, the documentation is not perfect, not everything is there 
yet. It might seem rough but behind the screens many effort is put in it.

Iff we are accepted, we want to move to BoostBooks. If not, we will 
(probably) select something else, e.g. a Wiki. Because the library is 
large, we could not do this before review and take the risk to move 
after rejection to something else. We know that Doxygen is not perfect. 
What IS perfect in Doxygen is the integration between small code samples 
and documentation. All the samples you see do really compile. They are 
extracted automatically from sample-sources (included in the 
distribution). We want to keep this feature so on selecting another doc 
system we have to inventorize the possibilities (tips welcome).

Regards, Barend