Andrzej Krzemienski wrote:
Hi Everyone, I would like to get the community's advice on removing the support for InPlaceFactory from Boost.Optional.
The motivation for this is to reduce dependencies among Boost libraries. Boost.Optional is surprisingly heavy. This is mostly due to the dependency on InPlaceFactory and OptionalPointee from Boost.Utility.
https://pdimov.github.io/boostdep-report/develop/module-weights.html#weight:...
InPlaceFactory ( https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_83_0/libs/utility/doc/html/utility/utilitie...) used to be a workaround for the missing "perfect forwarding" in C++03, it emulated both "universal references" and variadic templates. It is unnecessary for C++11 where Boost.optional offers a superior interface. But removing the support for InPlaceFactory would break code for people that happen to use it. When the user switches to C++11 (C++03 support is deprecated for Boost.Optional) they should expect their programs to still compile. But if I remove the InPlaceFactory, it forces the users to change their code, even if they are already on C++11.
Can InPlaceFactory be moved to a separate library? Or is it so useless now that it has to be eradicated even at the cost of breaking users' code?
Can you not just forward-declare the two base classes boost::in_place_factory_base and boost::typed_in_place_factory_base?