Re: [Boost-users] Integral type with no upper limit?

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] Integral type with no upper limit?
From: Scott McMurray (me22.ca+boost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-05-27 00:18:00

2009/5/26 Marshall Clow <marshall_at_[hidden]>:
> At 1:00 AM +0200 5/27/09, Michiel Helvensteijn wrote:
>>
>> Perhaps Boost shouldn't reinvent the wheel? There's already an open-source
>> arbitrary precision arithmetic library: http://gmplib.org/
>
> Which says:
> Â  Â  Â  Â GMP is distributed under the GNU LGPL. This license makes the library
> free to use, share, and improve, and allows you to pass on the result. The
> license gives freedoms, but also sets firm restrictions on the use with
> non-free programs.
>
> There are people using Boost for both free and non-free programs.
> It's my understanding that we (Boost) want to continue to support all of
> them.
>

Personally, I think Boost would be best served providing some sort of
expression template wrapper into which different arbitrary-precision
numbers could be plugged.

That would mean far less work to get something usable, as it could use
the GMP implementation initially.  Then a BSL version of the
implementation could be developed incrementally, while non-floss users
could license some implementation to use with the Boost interface.