Re: [boost] Use of third-party libraries

Subject: Re: [boost] Use of third-party libraries
From: Gavin Lambert (gavinl_at_[hidden])
Date: 2014-07-25 03:49:38

On 25/07/2014 18:53, Michael Shepanski wrote:
>> Assuming there is no backend for the database I am interested in, I
>> might want to have quince core in order to develop that backend. I
>> therefore think that quince core should always be built.
>
> In that case, sooner or later you're going to have to tweak quince's jam
> file, to make the building of your backend contingent on the presence of
> some third-party library (fron MySQL or Oracle or whatever).

You're assuming that all backends must be built as part of the quince tree.

What if I wanted to write a backend private to a particular application 
and never intended to be published (perhaps it's some proprietary data 
format rather than a "real" database)?

If the core were always built, it could be used with a custom backend 
that quince's jam file knows nothing about.  (Provided that the core 
itself doesn't have to be modified to add a new backend -- but I would 
hope that's true as it's part of standard coding principles.)

> I'm coming around to Karsten Ahnert's idea that I should ship sqlite.
> (I wouldn't call it a "default backend", as Karsten does, because
> application code still has to make a choice -- but that's just a
> quibble.).

All of sqlite or just a connector to it?  I don't have any particular 
opinion on this either way, but bear in mind that if you do the former, 
users may still wish to use a different version of it (perhaps they need 
a bugfix from a newer version than shipped with quince), and (especially 
if you don't provide a way to do that) users will expect you to keep it 
up to date, which increases maintenance costs slightly.