Geometry Boost List: [geometry] Report not yet implemented feature at runtime

Subject: [geometry] Report not yet implemented feature at runtime
From: Samuel Debionne (samuel.debionne_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-03-09 13:58:40

Hi,
The rational of this proposed feature is the following (pseudo code) :

variant<point_xy, point_xyz, polygon_xy, polygon_xyz> geometries_t;
geometries_t a, b;

bg::within(a, b);

With the present implementation this code would not compile since
within() is not implemented for all the combinations of the bounded
types of the variant (not_implemented uses MPL_ASSERT to report this
error at compile time).

The following proposal introduce an other mechanism to report
incompatible type (or not yet implemented features) at runtime and is
prototyped here :

https://github.com/boostorg/geometry/compare/develop...sdebionne:feature/nyi_runtime_error

The specifications are :

- maintain backward compatibility (default to compile time error)
- specialization on a per algorithm basis and per compile unit (meaning
that some part of the applications may use compile time errors while
other part may use runtime errors)
- should be quite easy to adapt the existing algorithm (see the example
with within)

I can't think of a solution to implement this as a pure extension (e.g.
without modifying the core library). In short, this is what I have in mind :

An algorithm should be identified by an "algorithm tag" (this could be
extended to strategies as well) :

BOOST_GEOMETRY_REGISTER_ALGORITHM(within)

At the dispatch stage, the algorithm inherit from the new
not_implemented<> interface that takes the algorithm tag as first
template parameter :

template <...>
struct within
  : not_implemented<within_tag, Tag1, Tag2>
  {};

Finally, in the code that invokes the algorithm, set whether to use
runtime errors:

// Enable runtime errors
BOOST_GEOMETRY_NYI_RUNTIME_ERROR(within_tag)

try {
  bg::within(a, b);
} catch (bg::not_implemented_runtime_error& ex) {
  std::cerr << ex.what() << " is not yet implemented."
}

Is there any interest in this feature?