Re: [Boost-users] Spirit Porting

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] Spirit Porting
From: Robert Ramey (ramey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-10-30 13:24:47

Joel de Guzman wrote:
> On 10/30/2010 8:09 AM, Hartmut Kaiser wrote:

>>> Currently I building on AIX and use the new IBM compiler (v11.1)
>>> but If I understand correctly you are saying dont bother trying to
>>> port from classic->Qi.  ?
>>
>> It's difficult for me to suggest anything as I have no experience
>> with the IBM compiler. All I have is second hand knowledge from my
>> talks with Michael Wong and from what I gather the Boost regression
>> tests. I know they are working on the compiler to improve Boost
>> compatibility, but Spirit was not on Michaels list of important
>> Boost libraries to support.
>>> Is it possible to provide more detailed information, about what
>>> parts of spirit Qi(I assume this is V2) the IBM compiler cant cope
>>> with ?
>>
>> If you look at the tests, you'll see that all are failing for this
>> compiler.
>
> It will definitely take a lot of effort to support the IBM compiler.

It should be noted that all the tests are failing at the same spot
within MPL with the same error.  Also, VACPP is passing all
MPL tests except one.

This would suggest that it's worth the effort to fix/workaround this one 
failure
which originates in the MPL library.

Of course no one can know
what's over the error horizon - but a little effort would likely yield
a lot more information as to what might have to be done to
permit the new spirit to work with this compiler.

> Last time we had a chat with Michael Wong at BoostCon 2010, we
> requested that the infrastructure used by Spirit be given some
> attention (e.g. Fusion). That's the best I can say ATM.

The fusion tests show
lots of failures on VACPP - but many of them are from the same
source. It's unclear how much of the xml_archive syntax (if any) depends
on those parts of fusion which aren't working  here.

>The rest is
> up to us. Alas, neither Hartmut nor I have access to the IBM compiler
> nor have any experience with it. If Spirit classic can compile on the
> IBM compiler, then someone must have done some work to make it so. I
> don't recall who that is anymore.

I can tell you I never did anything specifically regarding spirit and the
IBM compiler.  From my perspective - it just worked.  This was
the source of my initial enthusiasm for spirit.

>If you, Robert, or anyone else
> would want to do the same for Spirit2, then that would be very
> welcome.

lol - since I did nothing before, I'm happy to do the same again.

>I can't speak for Hartmut, but I don't have sufficient time
> nor resources to support the compiler.

I"m sorry to hear that.  I hope someone with this compiler can
invest some effort to see how far this can go.  To repeat the above,
it's quite possible that a little effort would make the current spirit
sufficiently usable in many cases.  That would go along way
in my opinion.

The source of this discussion has been the result of my (and I believe 
other's)
misunderstanding of the evolution of spirit from 1.x to 2.x .  I had 
presumed
that this was some sort of upgrade in that 2.x would do everything the 1.x
package would do plus a lot more and be faster (at least at runtime) than 
1.x
The way the headers are arranged and the "deprecated" warning message
strongly suggested that users should upgrade to the new system and that
we were being notified that support for 1.x would be expiring in some 
(near?)
future.  Now it's clear that I misinterpreted all this.  I think things 
would
have been helped alot if there was a whole new library, set of directories
namespace, etc. called "spirit2".  Instead of a compiler warning - which
users (my self included) take as indication that my code should be changed,
I think it would have been more accurate to state somewhere something
like. "Support for spirit 1.x is now limited - users are encouraged to
use spirit2 for new applications".   I think that would have helped us a 
lot.

Robert Ramey