"Peter Dimov" <pdimov@mmltd.net> wrote
Arkadiy Vertleyb wrote:
My problem with the current approach is that synchronous operations seems to be viewed as second-class citizens. I understand that this is caused by the fact that asio is about the asynchronous IO. But asio is presented as the "best C++ networking library around", and in networking both synchronous and asynchronous approaches are used, and neither is superior for all possible cases.
Consider "Patterns for concurrent and networked objecs" by D. Schmidt, at al. Quite a few patterns described there are related to the synchronous processing.
I think a little refactoring might lead to a better solution than trying to add synchronous operations on top of existing asio.
I think that we should be careful not to break something that has been proven to work well because a little refactoring "might" lead to a better solution (unless the author agrees, of course.) The argument that asio is presented as "the best networking C++ library around" is not enough of an excuse.
Anything should be done only if the author agrees. All I was trying to say is that, as a potential client of the library (everybody does some networking now and then), I tried to map it to one of the tasks I had in the past. I happen to have solved that task by using synchronous operations + multiple threads (maybe because it is the most intuitive way for a not very experienced network programmer, which I am, but I still doubt very much that asynchronous approach would have been better). So, when I am evaluating a "Networking Library", and see that it clearly consideres one approach to networking inferior to the other one, and I think they both are equaly important, that means that I am in fundamental disagreement with the library author on the subject, and makes me wonder whether this is the networking library I would like to see in Boost. Besides nobody yet convinced me that socket should depend on demultiplexer. The fact that it "has been proven to work well" is "not enough of an excuse", IMO. Otherwise this review would not make any sense. I totally appreciate the fact that the library has a lot of positive reviews, and, as you say, proven to work well. All I want is that the synchronous approach to networking was given enough attention, and added cleanly rather than as a fast fix -- a wrapper around asynchronous stuff. Regards, Arkadiy