Re: [boost] [XInt] Looking for Review Manager (was: Improving review process)

Subject: Re: [boost] [XInt] Looking for Review Manager (was: Improving review process)
From: Chad Nelson (chad.thecomfychair_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-01-13 13:42:07

On Thu, 13 Jan 2011 18:29:54 +0100
"vicente.botet" <vicente.botet_at_[hidden]> wrote:

[...]
>> Take an example of Xint. There were plenty of comments, suggestion
>> and review the various time it was "beta'd" on this list asking for 
>> comments. And that's not counting the fact that a arbitrary
>> precision integer library has traditionally been a perennial topic
>> of suggestion for GSOC ideas. Yet, almost exactly 6 months to date,
>> it still hasn't had a review manager assigned. Is that really a lack
>> of interest in such a library, or more a lack of review managers?
>
> I would say a lack of interest of someone that could be a review
> manager :) IMO, one of the author's role is to look for a review
> manager between the people having an interest for the library.

Yes, and I've been remiss in that department. Not for lack of desire,
just lack of knowledge of how to go about it.

So here's the request: would someone who's interested in XInt please
step up and volunteer to be the review manager for it? I'm ready to
help in any way I can.

To refresh peoples' memory, XInt is the eXtended Integer library, a set
of classes and functions for storing and manipulating numbers that can
be much, *much* larger than an int, long, or even long long type can
handle. It's designed for correctness and maximum portability, *not*
maximum speed, so it's pure C++ targeted at any modern CPU and
operating system (no GPU or assembly-language code, at least at this
point).

The library is very extensively documented, and the major parts of it
require no specialized math knowledge -- it's pure arithmetic, though
the details occasionally get complex. The only parts that might require
some domain-specific knowledge to completely grok are the prime-number
and (maybe) the modular math stuff.

Boost has needed something like XInt for a long time now. It's
general-purpose code that a sizable minority of programmers need at
least occasionally; it's hard to do properly and all but impossible to
do quickly; and the solutions that are available have licensing issues
that make them unsuitable for many programs, and/or aren't C++ or aren't
very well designed. That's the perfect recipe for a Boost library.

At the risk of sounding like a military recruiting poster: step up and
do your part for Boost! ;-)
-- 
Chad Nelson
Oak Circle Software, Inc.
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