Re: [boost] Road to low-quality-code is paved with good intentions of dropping dependencies

Subject: Re: [boost] Road to low-quality-code is paved with good intentions of dropping dependencies
From: Daniel James (dnljms_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-01-07 11:55:42

On 7 January 2015 at 15:19, Peter Dimov <lists_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> Daniel James wrote:
>>
>> FWIW I'm fine with moving hash_fwd.hpp into core, or somewhere else.
>> Its intent was always to break the dependency on the rest of the hash
>> implementation, and if the dependency system can't understand that, then it
>> isn't doing its job.
>
>
> Creating a dependency system that will live up to everyone's expectations is
> not as easy as it sounds. To take hash_fwd as an example, suppose X uses
> hash_fwd.hpp, and Hash uses Y. The user installs X, which has to install
> Hash to get hash_fwd.hpp. Since the package Hash is now installed, it is
> listed in index.html, the users sees it as available, and tries to make use
> of it. If Y was not installed along with it, use of Hash would fail, and
> this isn't user friendly.

I meant the header isn't doing its job, which is why I was saying it's
okay to move it into core, as that would fix the problem you're
describing.

> You can get this behavior today, if you move hash_fwd.hpp to a submodule
> hash/fwd, but since the installer operates on packages, and hash/fwd is in
> the 'hash' package, the problem I outlined above will manifest. (Even if we
> ignore the fact that Hash is actually in the package 'functional', so things
> are even more coarse-grained than that.)

Hash isn't the package 'functional', it's in the git submodule
'functional'. I'm certainly not having a git submodule just for one
header. They're way too expensive.