Re: [Boost-users] Spirit Porting

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] Spirit Porting
From: Hartmut Kaiser (hartmut.kaiser_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-10-28 21:21:45

> I have encouraged and supported Bryce's undertaking on the assumption that
> the usage of the latest spirit would improve the xml_iarchive in every way
> including performance, maintainability and portability.  This assumption
> was inspired and supported by the warnings that spirit classic was
> "deprecated" which seemed to suggest that it would be in our interest to
> convert to the latest spirit.  The xml grammar used in the serialization
> library is very simple - what could go wrong?  Well, It is starting to
> look like this assumption was wrong and I'm very disappointed. I feel the
> developer's of spirit have let Bryce down.

Robert, I believe you didn't mean what you wrote, as otherwise your words
appear to be a bit too heavy handed. We are in permanent and active contact
with Bryce (there is a lengthy mailing list discussion, and I am in contact
with him on a daily basis on IRC). Nobody left Bryce down. Additionally, I
believe he explicitly stated that in his original mail.

BTW, the 'deprecated' warnings never claimed that Spirit.Classic as a whole
was deprecated, but only the headers you've been using. We have no intent to
remove Spirit.Classic from Boost. A simple change of the include directive
to other header files as suggested by those warnings (and defining a pp
constant during compilation) would have fixed the warnings altogether.
That's something you could have done in 15 minutes if you only had cared to
ask.

> I'm hoping the spirit developers can step up and follow through to realize
> the expections developed for this package.

What expectations? What package?

> I'm hopeful that a couple of tweaks can reslove the issue - as I said the
> xml_archive grammar is a very simple one.  Some of the issues seem simple
> as well - compile time with intel compilers, some hiccup deep in mpl which
> hangs up the IBM C++ compiler.  And I'm more than hopeful that the spirit
> developer's can place a high priority on doing whatever is necessary to
> fix this.  The serialization library is one of the highest profile users
> of spirit and an easy example and test case.  Once, you put it out there,
> it's your responsability to see that it meets the expections you've
> created for it.

Just forget the IBM compiler. It's not up to the task to compile any of
Spirit V2 code. We talked to Michel Wong at BoostCon about this and he said
that his compiler team resources are very limited and that he does not
expect this to be fixed too soon.

> I was very surprised (and disappointed) to find that Wave - a very
> convincing example of the capabilities of spirit does not use the latest
> spirit.  Had I known that, I wouldn't have encouraged Bryce with his
> efforts.

Again, this sounds like a hasty assessment to me. You have no idea what it
means to port something like Wave to a different underlying parser platform.
It's not that somebody would be paying for doing so...

> As I said, I'm hopeful that this is not too hard to fix - the spirit
> library tests are mostly OK (except for the IBM compiler which has to be
> resolved).  Maybe you could start by adding a test which builds a grammar
> similar to the xml_archive grammar.

Working around compiler deficits or simply braindead compilers is never
easy. However, that's exactly what you are demanding here so light-heartily.
Bryce is working hard, harder than many people I know. If I was you I
wouldn't push my luck, but instead be happy he is willing to help.

Regards Hartmut
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