Re: [boost] To modularize, or not to modularize. What is the plan?

Subject: Re: [boost] To modularize, or not to modularize. What is the plan?
From: Richard Hodges (hodges.r_at_[hidden])
Date: 2019-05-10 21:56:10

In the end, all truly useful libraries are hierarchial, not flat.

Some library components share needs.

For example, variants, tuples, optionals and strings are useful almost
everywhere.

Hierarchial libraries encourage re-use of lower level components.

If you make boost truly flat, it means requiring an implementation of (say
) string in every component.

That's daft.

Flattening boost is the wrong direction.

Example: beast is built on Asio , which is built on system. Two truly
brilliant components, which would be much less useful if built in isolation.

On Fri, 10 May 2019, 15:12 Peter Dimov via Boost, <boost_at_[hidden]>
wrote:

> Rene Rivera wrote:
>
> > Must be that we talk to different users. The interactions I get are more
> > commonly "I want to use Boost Beast", "Does Boost have X?" (implication
> > being that's all they want), and of course the eternal "I can't use
> Boost,
> > it's too big.".
>
> These are nothing compared to the interactions we'll be getting if we
> force
> people to declare their header-only dependencies. This will break
> literally
> thousands of packages downstream. For better or worse, today, after `apt
> install libboost-dev` and/or `find_package(Boost)`, you can #include any
> header-only Boost library and use it, without going into specifics.
>
> PS the other day I got the equivalent of "can't use mp11, it's too big."
> Something tells me that a "modular" Boost will still remain "too big".
>
>
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