Re: [boost] [PREDEF] Review for the Boost.Predef library by Rene Riviera

Subject: Re: [boost] [PREDEF] Review for the Boost.Predef library by Rene Riviera
From: Mathias Gaunard (mathias.gaunard_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-02-21 06:16:17

On 02/21/2012 08:17 AM, Rene Rivera wrote:

>> More then that, consider build systems that should stat 103 files
>> for each cpp file compiled.
>
> That thought did cross my mind when deciding on the header structure.
> But, given how many compilers support some form of precompiled inclusion
> I decided that it was OK to go with the modular arrangement. Especially
> for the much easier maintainability of the library. One option I can
> think of is to provide a single concatenated header that is generated
> from the current modular headers. This, of course is a bit more work on
> the library side, and is considerably harder for users to humanly
> understand one big concatenated header file. Hence this is something
> that I would seriously consider adjusting if the number of headers
> becomes a real measurable problem. Which also suggests that I should add
> some header parsing performance tests.

Bryce Lelbach did a similar library to yours: 
<https://github.com/brycelelbach/detect>

It only contains 4 short files + 1 file to include them all and is 
perfectly maintainable.

If you cut the line explicitly between mutually-exclusive macros and 
others that are not, then this structure works very well.

To me it doesn't make sense if the library has more than 10 files. It is 
a sign there is a big design and scalability problem there.