Re: The new Boost 17.0.0

From: Andrey Semashev (andrey.semashev_at_[hidden])
Date: 2020-11-27 10:36:10

On 11/27/20 11:58 AM, Antony Polukhin via Boost wrote:
> 
> == The Solution
> TL;DR: we need a C++17 fork of Boost with close to 0 dependencies
> between libraries and namespace versioning.
> 
> С++17 provides many vocabulary types, feature test macro and a bunch
> of features for variadic templates. All of that allows us to drop a
> lot of weight and fix majority of popularity and usability problems.
> 
> Rule of a thumb should be: "If the C++17 provides that functionality -
> use the standard version".

We went over this multiple times. I'll just reiterate that I disagree 
with this approach. Many Boost libraries are superior to std 
equivalents, and I want to keep using them inside and outside Boost. 
Also, I don't see why Boost libraries are not allowed to exist as an 
extension over the std equivalents.

> That approach would allow to loose a lot of weight, do not mess with
> vocabulary types and significantly reduce dependencies
> https://pdimov.github.io/boostdep-report/master/module-levels.html
> 
> By levels:
> config 0 -> we probably would not need it any more

That's wishful thinking, unfortunately. Compiler bugs still exist, and 
C++17 support level is not uniform across compilers. Moving forward, 
later C++ versions are also not uniformly implemented.

> assert 1 -> 0

I'm not aware of a standard replacement of Boost.Assert. <cassert> is 
not one.