On Mon, 6 Jun 2005 13:53:32 +0100 "John Maddock" <john@johnmaddock.co.uk> wrote:
What is your evaluation of the design?
It seems fairly representative of current meta template programming techniques. I still have concerns about the tag-types bastraction. However, I also see the advantages. Maybe BOTH style interfaces should be provided, even though it is largely redundant. Normally redundant interfaces are a bad thing, but I'm on the fence here... I like the similarities with TypeTraits, and I sample usage has been pretty easy (once I got past my initial problems).
What is your evaluation of the implementation?
N/A.
What is your evaluation of the documentation?
As obvious from my previous comments in this thread, the documentation need a lot of work. In addition, I think a single example, developed throught the documentation would be helpful. A modified version includes better examples, but the examples need to be fully explained with lots of textual explanation (more than currently exists).
What is your evaluation of the potential usefulness of the library?
I think it can be very useful, bth for unifying the implementations of several Boost libraries and also as a good generic programming tool.
Did you try to use the library? With what compiler? Did you have any
problems?
Yes. gcc 3.2, 3.2.2. I ran into some compiler warnings, but I found that they were due to an existing bug in the gcc 3.2 compiler.
How much effort did you put into your evaluation? A glance? A quick reading? In-depth study?
My initial reading of the documentation was fairly quick, but I then spent some time re-reading it, and a fair amount of time in a discussion with the author. I compiled the examples and ran the tests. In addition, I tried to write some other code to use the interface, but ran out of time, and never got it working.
Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain?
Somewhat, but not near as much as some others on this list.
And finally, every review should answer this question:
Do you think the library should be accepted as a Boost library? Be sure to say this explicitly so that your other comments don't obscure your overall
opinion.
Yes, though I would regret that vote if the documentation and examples were not given a thorough re-working, taking into account all the current feedback (and applying that feedback, pretty much all of which would make the documentation much better, and the library more useful).