Re: [boost] Another GGL review

Subject: Re: [boost] Another GGL review
From: David Bergman (David.Bergman_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-11-17 14:43:38

DISCLAIMER: I have not looked at the GGL yet, so my comments are mostly of a meta character.

On Nov 17, 2009, at 2:17 PM, Simonson, Lucanus J wrote:

> Jonathan Franklin wrote:
>> On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 10:15 AM, Jose <jmalv04_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>>> In my opinion, a good r-tree implementation is necessary. I have no
>>> experience with the above library but I've seen other code from this
>>> author to be of high quality.
>> 
>> For the purposes of my own review, I'm trying to decide whether I
>> think the library should be accepted without a spatial index.  Would
>> anyone like to sway my opinion one way or the other?
>> :-)
> 
> Personally I don't think that is a reasonable condition.  If I were managing the review I would discount such an objection as unreasonable.  Implementing a good 2D spatial index that is correct and competitively fast and memory efficient is 9 months of work.

Why would the effort needed matter for an evaluation of a library?

>  I won't go into all that is required.  Implementing a spatial index that is merely correct and sufficiently generic is probably one month of work (design, implementation, test, documentation) for a very experience developer working without distractions.

So, *if* the spatial index is considered crucial for the intended uses of GGL, we just wait for 3 part-time months for a re-admission into the review queue. That does not sound unreasonable, given that hypothesis of the index being crucial.

>  These estimates should be considered optimistic, as most such estimates are.  Hastily adding a spatial index implemented by someone else might be ill advised.  If the original author does not choose to maintain the code it is a big risk.  I would prefer that a 2d spatial index in boost be competitively fast.  Demonstrating that will be as challenging and subjective as demonstrating performance for the boolean operations.  I think it would be reasonable to let a generic 2
> d spatial index data structure be reviewed as a stand alone library when someone has one they feel is ready for boost.

Fair enough, if it can easily be plugged into GGL.

/David