Re: [boost] [netlib] 0.8-beta now available!

Subject: Re: [boost] [netlib] 0.8-beta now available!
From: Cliff Green (cliffg_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-11-15 14:37:58

From: "Dean Michael Berris" <mikhailberis_at_[hidden]>
> Cool! Maybe you'd like to contribute to cpp-netlib some of these thin
> networking libraries? :D We'd love to get more contributions and
> feedback as well.

Maybe - mostly depends on work restrictions (the library is completely 
generic, though, so there's nothing specifically proprietary about the code, 
just that it's developed as a work project). Let me run it against my boss 
(worst case, I could re-develop using the same concepts, but would rather 
not have to re-write everything).

> Currently the asynchronous client implementation is an active object.
> It's really trivial to change this to be just a normal
> io_service-playing implementation that doesn't have its own lifetime
> thread -- at the cost of a simple interface.

It might be possible to have both - I'll have to share some design ideas 
with you (although for more complex protocols like HTTP it might be 
difficult). Again, it's been a while since I've looked at netlib, so let me 
review the latest.

In any case, it's nice to be able to package up functionality that a lot of 
users need, but it's also nice to be able to decouple.

> Also, now it requires GCC 4.4 at least to build applications that use
> it, making it near impossible to support embedded platforms that still
> use older versions of GCC (2.95, 4.1.x).

GCC 4.4? Really? What is driving that? I can understand not supporting a 
really ancient GCC such as 2.95, or even 3.x versions, but no support for 
4.12 (for example)?

> At any rate, thanks very much Cliff for the feedback, I hope you can
> take a look at cpp-netlib and hopefully you can share more insights to
> help shape a hopefully boost-worthy network library implementation. :)

I'll be glad to help however I can (mostly just depends on available time, 
as is usually the case :) ).

Cliff