Re: [Boost] [Describe] Review starts Monday 1st March 2021 - 10th March 2021

From: Rainer Deyke (rdeyke_at_[hidden])
Date: 2021-03-08 08:38:44

On 27.02.21 23:53, Richard Hodges via Boost wrote:
> Please provide in your review information you think is valuable to
> understand your choice to ACCEPT or REJECT including Describe as a
> Boost library. Please be explicit about your decision (ACCEPT or REJECT).

I vote to ACCEPT Boost.Describe.  Although the library has some 
weaknesses (which have already come up in the review process), I do not 
consider them serious enough to delay the acceptance of Boost.Describe. 
  Boost.Describe in its present form already passes the "would I use it" 
test.

> Some other questions you might want to consider answering:
> 
>    - What is your evaluation of the design?

It's a good minimalistic building blocks for higher level abstractions.

The lack of a way to add annotations to described members is 
problematic.  Normally, types in C++ can be externally annotated by 
defining a traits class template, but this is not really an option for 
the Di types returned by Boost.Describe, since they have no public names.

>    - What is your evaluation of the implementation?

The library adds functions to user-defined namespaces, which introduces 
the possibility of name collisions.  For example, BOOST_DESCRIBE_ENUM 
adds a function called _enum_descriptor_fn.  A better name for this 
function would be _boost_describe_enum_descriptor_fn, which 
significantly reduces the chance of a name collision.

>    - What is your evaluation of the documentation?

Good.

>    - What is your evaluation of the potential usefulness of the library?

Very useful.

>    - Did you try to use the library? With which compiler(s)? Did you
>      have any problems?

No.

>    - How much effort did you put into your evaluation? A glance? A quick
>      reading? In-depth study?

A few hours.

>    - Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain?

Yes.

-- 
Rainer Deyke (rainerd_at_[hidden])