[Boost-users] Re: Installation issue

From: Micha Bieber (onsager_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-04-07 03:55:46

p> It's difficult to compare boost to qt (in my opinion) becase qt is
p> related to some particular domain (gui etc) however it has many thing in
p> it but all of them are interconnected. Boost is an umbrella of very 
p> useful libraries http://boost.org/libs/libraries.htm (so, boost is a 
p> collection of libs, and qt is a framework)

The differences are correct. But there are common things also - true for
almost every software.
Especially, if you have used boost some years ago and now again, you
will see that the level of integration has been raised. That also means
the concept of 'merging' I'm alluding to. IIRC, the intention was to
have a bundle of headers with template code inside and thats all.
Nowadays the intention might be the same but you have more components
depending on compilation etc.. On the other hand, it seems (have not yet
grasped completely the libraries current state at this level) many
components are still very loosely (good thing!) coupled. My wish was
simply, to make this transparent and as simple to use as possible for
the user. Documentation is helpful (and relatively cheap in this case)
here. A static html page with a dependence graph and links to compiled
versions of bcp (in order to create the adequate file structure for this
graph) might be useful in this context. Laterly a full-featured
installer could adopt the bcp part or parallel it.
Also a survey which library is 'pure templatized' which not, which
'pure' depending on particular features etc. would be helpful. Of
course, these informations are partly in the docs for the single
libraries my emphasis here is on survey.
BTW, for every developer dealing with these things it causes a look
regarding the big picture, what generally is a good thing also for the
development ..

Just my 2 cent,
Micha
--