[boost] [boost.random] Dependencies/modularization

Subject: [boost] [boost.random] Dependencies/modularization
From: Philip Bennefall (philip_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-12-01 18:44:08

Hi all,

I know that I have brought up this subject before and that work is being 
done to improve the situation, but I just wanted to ask about a specific 
case that I came across today while attempting to extract a subset of Boost. 
I want to use mersenne_twister.hpp, uniform_int_distribution.hpp and 
uniform_real_distribution.hpp from boost.random as part of an open source 
library that I am developing. Since the only part of Boost that I am using 
in that library is the Mersenne Twister prng, I figured I would ship the 
relevant headers along with my own source distribution. I used bcp to scan 
my code which includes these three headers, and I get a directory which is 
2.89 MB in size and which contains 304 files. I looked at what is being 
included, and in order of size the worst offenders are as follows:

preprocessor - 1.82 MB

type_traits - 604 KB

config - 250 KB

The other libraries that are included are tiny, and I would not consider 
config to be a problem either. Clearly, preprocessor is the worst offender 
by far here in terms of bloat. I wonder if there is an easy way to get rid 
of the dependency on that library without hacking Boost too much? As for 
type_traits, it seems a bit large for what I gather it is being used for in 
this case but is not the end of the world either. Does anyone have any 
suggestions? Will the modularization of Boost reduce these dependencies in 
the not too distant future? I know that a huge effort is being spent moving 
Boost to Git, but I am curious to know whether there is a roughly estimated 
timeline for the modularization work?

Kind regards,

Philip Bennefall