Is there somewhere a rational about the problem this is trying to solve? If
it's in the talk and you're allowed, maybe can you link to the PDF after
the talk?
On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 6:19 PM, Niall Douglas
Tomorrow at 11am after Eric's talk I'll be presenting at C++ Now a review of the upcoming C++ 11/14 mandatory Boost libraries. I looked at fifteen libraries and decided ten were worth further investigation. I'm sure you all remember my colour coded ranking of those ten libraries by "nearness" to entering Boost:
I sadly only have time to review four of those libraries during my talk, but one (APIBind) enables an alternative Boost 2.0 approach and I will spend 45 mins on that library alone. And here is my alternative Boost 2.0 vision:
Boost 2.0 is a alternative distro of modular standalone Boost libraries which can be each downloaded separately. Each has contemporary per commit CI testing and is nightly dashboarded by quality score by a web service under the 19 quality score headings listed at https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/wiki/BestPracticeHandbook (still unfinished, but nearly there).
APIBind allows the library end user to dependency inject what dependencies that library uses. This allows a Boost library, in a single codebase, to be part of both the monolithic Boost 1.x distro and to be modular and standalone and part of the Boost 2.x distro. Motivated library maintainers port their Boost 1.x library to the APIBind platform, and therefore can be part of both 1.x and 2.x distros if they want.
Those libraries not ported to APIBind remain in the 1.x distro, which I would assume will gradually fade into obsolescence over time. This makes sense, as if a maintainer is not motivated to do the port then it seems proper that library should gracefully deprecate.
There is some empirical data supporting the inevitability of this alternative vision of Boost 2.0. Of the ten libraries I examined in any detail:
* Just 1.5 libraries have any dependencies on Boost headers at all (the 0.5 is because that library is currently removing its Boost dependencies).
* Just 3 libraries can use Boost.Test.
* Just 3 libraries use Boost Docs.
* Just 2 libraries require using Boost.Build. The rest are header only, or use cmake.
* Just 6 libraries use Travis/Appveyor for free CI testing on Linux, OS X and Windows.
* Just 3 libraries use valgrind as part of their unit testing (two are mine!).
* Just 3 libraries use coveralls for coverage reporting (two are mine!).
Personally speaking, I think the new library authors are overwhelmingly voting for a complete break with Boost 1.x. It makes no sense to bundle these new libraries into a 1.x monolithic distro when they have no dependencies on Boost.
I believe now is the time we start establishing the infrastructure to shape the new Boost 2.0 distro instead of wasting resources on trying to refactor the 1.x distro. APIBind is there for maintainers wanting to be part of both distros. Let's make a clean break.
Niall
-- ned Productions Limited Consulting http://www.nedproductions.biz/ http://ie.linkedin.com/in/nialldouglas/
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