Re: [boost] [gsoc] Interest in BGL v2?

Subject: Re: [boost] [gsoc] Interest in BGL v2?
From: Andrew Sutton (asutton.list_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-03-31 09:21:16

>> I'd like to stay compatible and I'm also curious what was found lacking in
>> the old graph concepts.  The unifying graph concepts in BGLv1 are really
>> impressive for making all graph libraries adaptable to its interface &
>> algos.

The BGL concept hierarchy didn't address graph mutability very well.
There aren't a lot of algorithms in the library that require a lot of
add/remove functions, so it's not terribly surprising. I would also
have liked to see more semantic concepts: directed and undirected
graphs, weighted graphs, simple graphs, multigraphs. All of these
concepts show up as requirements in various places in the library, but
aren't expressed conceptually.

I disagree with the statement that the *concepts* make other graph
libraries adaptable to its interface. Specializations of the
graph_traits class and a ton of overloaded functions accomplish that
adaptation. I suspect that you can achieve exactly the same effect
using wrapper classes (and tons of overloaded functions). The concepts
give the requirements for adaptation.

Andrew