Re: [boost] Library dependencies and intrer-library code reuse

Subject: Re: [boost] Library dependencies and intrer-library code reuse
From: David Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-03-26 04:11:11

At Thu, 25 Mar 2010 22:58:45 -0500,
Zachary Turner wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 10:43 PM, Steven Watanabe <watanabesj_at_[hidden]>wrote:
> 
> > AMDG
> >
> >
> > Zachary Turner wrote:
> >
> >> So there we go.  Does this work, and if not why not?   Even if we agree
> >> it's
> >> a huge undertaking, is it worth it?  And if not, why not?
> >>
> >>
> >
> > Even if it were a good idea, it isn't going to happen.
> > Nothing that requires that much effort is ever going
> > to happen around here.  If we did have that kind of
> > manpower, I think there are many higher priorities.
> >
> >
> Surely we can't adopt that stance forever can we?  It's not difficult to
> imagine a scenario down the line where Boost has hundreds of independent
> libraries.  This won't scale.  It *cant* scale.  But at the same time, it
> really doesn't make sense for everyone to continue reinventing wheels in
> every single new library that gets added to boost.  It defeats the whole
> purpose of having a generic library in the first place, and makes the exact
> problem that everyone complains about (slow compile times) even
> worse!

Untangling (and minimizing) intra-library dependencies is certainly
doable—the untangling part has already been done
(http://gitorious.org/boost)—but you proposed something more radical…
and probably impossible when you consider the pimpl/header-only
requirement.  A pimpl-based type traits library?

-- 
Dave Abrahams           Meet me at BoostCon: http://www.boostcon.com
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