Re: [boost] CMake, modular Boost, and other stories

Subject: Re: [boost] CMake, modular Boost, and other stories
From: Rene Rivera (grafikrobot_at_[hidden])
Date: 2019-04-23 20:10:55

On Tue, Apr 23, 2019 at 3:00 PM James E. King III <jking_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 23, 2019 at 3:38 PM Rene Rivera via Boost
> <boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> >
> >
> > I disagree. In my ideal world the "Boost" package wouldn't exist at all
> and
> > you would only install/use/find the individual Boost libraries. Anything
> > else is either living in the past or a convenient transitional method.
> >
>
> One look at
> https://pdimov.github.io/boostdep-report/develop/module-overview.html
> is convincing enough to me that there are far too many dependencies to
> consider boost anything except a single packaged, versioned entity
> with many components.

You are being confused by the chaff. The important aspect to consider are
the cycles in the dependencies. When we hit zero cycles it means that
making Boost truly modular becomes a trivial problem. And we are making
good strides in lowering that number. As you can see here <
https://grafikrobot.github.io/boost_lib_stats/#_dependency_cycles>. Only
down to two! We can do it! We can do it! Yes, we, can!

Until C++ has package management that's as easy
> to use and the dependencies are better managed with a tool and
> distribution system as powerful as, say, python's pip - I don't see
> that changing.
>

That is a chicken and egg argument. And we already have many chickens and
eggs. Enough to suit many different styles of dependency and package
management.

-- 
-- Rene Rivera
-- Grafik - Don't Assume Anything
-- Robot Dreams - http://robot-dreams.net