"Jonathan Turkanis" <technews@kangaroologic.com> writes:
"David Abrahams" <dave@boost-consulting.com> wrote in message news:upt5k867g.fsf@boost-consulting.com...
Doesn't Walter update DMC++ quite often?
Yes, but there are lots of bugs on his list ;-)
Would it be better to just report bugs to him and wait for the fixes?
Walter seems to be very conscientious about bug reports, but I don't think you can assume that if you report a bug it will be fixed in a matter of weeks.
I have no major objection to the patches; I'm just slightly concerned about crufting up the codebase to add support for a previously unsupported compiler if it will happen without changes in a few weeks anyway.
I'd like to see boost support DMC soon. IMO, the best way to motivate Walter to fix the bugs which most affect boost is to run and
"David Abrahams" <dave@boost-consulting.com> wrote in message news:uwtzr18kc.fsf@boost-consulting.com... publish
the regression tests for DMC.
But if we cover all the bugs up with workarounds he'll never see any problems.
(I have a feeling I'm about to be asked to volunteer :-) ) I tend to think he'll be more motivated if DMC passes, say, 42% of the tests than if it passes 0-5%. In the latter case, judging by his reaction when preprocessor problems were reported to him earlier this year, I think he might conclude that the
Daniel said his fixes don't make DMC pass all the tests. So presumably there'll still be faiulres to point out. problems
must be with boost. (After all, DMC can't be *that* bad.)
Wow, that's pretty arrogant.
I didn't mean to imply he was arrogant. I said he 'very conscientious about bug reports'. But his *initial* reaction, when Dan Watkins reported proprocessor trouble to him either late last year, was that boost must have been expecting too much of the preprocessor. Later I (with limited knowledge of the preprocessor) gave him some short examples of code which the DMC preprocessor handled incorrectly, and he eventually fixed it. I believe Paul Mensonides did the same. But it turned out the problems with the DMC preprocessor ran very deep.
If he has that attitude, Boost test failure reports aren't going to make any difference.
So I'd like to see patches committed if they give substantial
I've carried on some brief email correspondence with him, and I've followed the DMC lists. I think he understandably likes to focus his attention on bugs that directly affect his existing users. So I can understand why he wouldn't be very motivated to start fixing a huge list of bugs if only 5% of the boost regressions pass. He'd be spending energy on fixes which wouldn't necessarily help any users in the immediate future. parts
of boost some hope of compiling with DMC.
But this is idle speculation.
Hum. Maybe you should ask Walter what he's going to be responsive to.
Like I said, I've discussed this with him a bit. Of course, more discussion would be a good idea. But my impression is that if we just report bugs and wait for Walter to fix them it will be a long time before substantial parts of boost work. Jonathan