Re: Reducing dependency on Boost.Regex

From: Robert Ramey (ramey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2023-03-14 17:34:49

On 3/13/23 5:54 AM, Boris Kolpackov via Boost wrote:
> John Maddock via Boost <boost_at_[hidden]> writes:
> 

> This implicit "if you don't include the header then you don't need to
> link the dependency" approach doesn't scale well to cases where Boost is
> split into individual packages which are managed by a package manager.

Right.  This is a built-in deficiency of the package manager approach. 
Dependencies are dependent upon the actual end user application and 
cannot be logically discerned a priori by any package manager.  Contrary 
to what one would hope, the package manager is not a panacia and trying 
to make it into one is a hopeless quest which leads to pointless efforts 
to "eliminate dependencias" and create "standalone" libraries.

> When the package manager undertakes to provide a Boost library, it
> should come with all the dependencies that could be needed for any
> usage scenario, unless certain features are explicitly not enabled
> (which is essentially what we have done -- not enabled regex by
> default in a bunch of libraries; I suppose we could have instead not
> enabled ICU in regex by default).

This mini-history illustrates my point above.

More thinking is required on this subject.  Perhaps the role of the IDE 
needs to be expanded or ... ?

Robert Ramey
> 
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