Martin de Lasa wrote:
Jonathan,
I never officially proposed the library; I just requested comments. Although there seemed to be quite a bit of interest, I became very busy and didn't have time to work on it.
However, I'm working on it again now -- as of last week -- and hope to request comments soon and then to propose it for inclusion.
That's great. Out of curiosity are you shooting to have a working draft ready for some particular time?
I'm thinking maybe April 1. Wait ... maybe I'd better make that April 2.
I don't know a lot about AOP; the support for AOP in the interfaces library was based on another article by Chris and wasn't very well developed. I think I want to include pretty comprehensive support, or none at all, and I haven't decided which yet. Sorry I can't be more helpful right now.
It funny, though I have been annoyed for years by the design issues that AOP attempts to address, I only became aware of AOP (as a formal technique) recently. So, it looks like we are in the same boat !!
Have you found any good papers/books/videos that you feel talk about AOP at the depth of level for which you want to provide support? As with any techniques I am sure the 80/20 rule applies to AOP (i.e. 20% of features will deliver 80% of the benefit). Though I have never been part of the formal boost lib proposal process, I wonder if getting a solid/minimal subset of AOP features into a boost lib might do as a first cut to proposing the lib.
Based on the AOP literature I've read, my feeling is that a direct "port" of an AOP framework from some other language that does not use a specialized pre-processor would not satisfy AOP people and would not fit C++ very well. My plan is to formulate a model that is designed specifically for the capabilities of C++ and that can provide solutions to (some of) the main problems that motivate AOP. I expect the notions of advice and pointcuts, for example, to be quite different from existing frameworks. I have a bunch of ideas but I haven't worked them out yet to the point where I want to share them.
Thanks again. I look forward to what you come up with!
Thanks!
Martin
-- Jonathan Turkanis CodeRage http://www.coderage.com