Re: [boost] [review] The review of Boost.DoubleEnded starts today: September 21 - September 30

Subject: Re: [boost] [review] The review of Boost.DoubleEnded starts today: September 21 - September 30
From: Edward Diener (eldiener_at_[hidden])
Date: 2017-09-27 12:42:15

On 9/27/2017 2:03 AM, degski via Boost wrote:
> On 27 September 2017 at 00:43, Joaquin M López Muñoz via Boost <
> boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> 
>> ... but libraries, in my opinion, should start with a minimal and
>> well grounded design and add more stuff as demand proves their need.
>>
> 
> 
> This sounds good in theory, but doesn't work like that in practice.
> Libraries tend to get "stuck" in their inital state.
> 
> As an example of this: I recently proposed to add variadic move
> construction for nodes to boost::pool (a trivial change). And even though
> this has obvious advantages (and would get rid for C++11 capable compilers
> of the use of M4 to generate the necessary code), this was received with:
> file a PR, including tests (?) and change to documentation. Enough to put
> me off, so I just changed it locally.

The pool library has no official maintainer so it had been added to the 
CMT libraries. You would probably have gotten more response to your 
suggestion if pool had an official maintainer. I do not think that is 
much proof that libraries tend to get "stuck" in their initial state, 
although it happens some of the time. C++ inheritance often means that 
you can add functionality to a library via another library or your own 
one-off class(es). But I agree that the initial notion that a library 
should have a well grounded design, although "minimal" is highly 
subjective, is a good one.

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