We considered this syntax (you might be able to find the discussion on the Boost developers list; GMane is running a bit slow for me at the moment). The basic problem is that we would need both const- and
actually I do not unterstand that point, but well, I guess I am to new to the BGL to get that.
On the performance side, it would make copying descriptors more expensive (e.g., with VertexListS=vecS, a vertex descriptor is just an integer; it would have to go to _at least_ a pointer). On the other side, I don't see that this would help performance much when accessing internal properties.
Well, it does help! Since I got a workaround to that problem: I checked the code of the adjacency_list.hpp a bit and got the idea how I can save the boost_graph[vertex_descriptor] lookup to my desired internal property object: by storing pointers to just that returned object, which is of type Spot* in my example. This works great and speeds up my application at least a bit. If you are interested in some code, you are surely welcome. Greetings, Sebastian Weber