Re: [boost] Core libraries should separated from experimentallibraries

Subject: Re: [boost] Core libraries should separated from experimentallibraries
From: Raymond Wan (r.wan_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-11-25 10:56:33

Hi all,

Stefan Seefeld wrote:
> In short: There is a great variability in technical and non-technical 
> aspects of boost components, which IMO suggest that running them as 
> individual projects would be beneficial to everybody. I believe this 
> could all be done within the Boost.org umbrella, but with more autonomy 
> to sub-projects.

Perhaps just stating the obvious, but in response to earlier comments by 
others about how other languages have many libraries, Perl's CPAN has 
the modules all separated and can handle dependencies well so that only 
they are downloaded.  I've actually heard people say that they do not 
want to use boost because "it is so large" and "I don't want to download 
it all just to use one part of it".  Actually, the more likely comment 
is "I don't want to use it so that my users will have to download all of it"

Personally, there are many boost libraries that I know I will never use 
but I don't mind installing them since the space they occupy is nothing 
compared to my core files :-P .  But for many others, I wonder if this 
monolithic nature of boost could hurt it as it gets larger and larger...

Of course, this is hard to do...but maybe in the short run, it would be 
nice to:

* indicate for each library what other library it depends on or recommends

* assign a status to each library indicating how well it is maintained 
or its stability and if it needs help

Is there some kind of "gantt chart" on boost.org that has the version 
numbers along the x-axis and each library on the y-axis and a dots 
showing when it was updated [perhaps colored to show if the updates are 
minor or major -- could break software that uses it].  Might be an 
interesting first step?

Ray