Re: [boost] Boost.Uuid and header-only support

Subject: Re: [boost] Boost.Uuid and header-only support
From: James E. King, III (jking_at_[hidden])
Date: 2017-11-05 00:31:18

On Sat, Nov 4, 2017 at 1:53 PM, Peter Dimov via Boost <boost_at_[hidden]
> wrote:

> James E. King, III wrote:
>
> Making Boost.Random header-only could still be considered an improvement,
>> whether or not what it depends on is header-only.
>>
>
> It might, but Uuid will still regress from header-only to requiring a
> library, so this doesn't help.
>
>
I was wondering, does it even make sense to have the default RNG of
uuids::random_generator
set to a PseudoRandomNumberGenerator for boost::uuid? It is very expensive
to seed and then use
a mersenne twister when compared to just acquiring 16 bytes of entropy.

I'd like the default uuids::random_generator to use a random_device
implementation (I have
successfully moved the implementation I have into uuid detail locally),
however if I change
the default type in uuids::random_generator that would be a breaking change
for
anyone using the constructors that take a reference or a pointer... it
would be much more efficient
to just get 16 bytes of entropy instead.