On 11/23/2011 3:39 AM, Vicente J. Botet Escriba wrote:
Le 22/11/11 18:27, Jeffrey Lee Hellrung, Jr. a écrit :
Within the discussion for the review of the proposed Boost.Local library, Hartmut Kaiser raised a concern that I think should be addressed more broadly by the community, if possible. I quote Hartmut:
Ok. However this raises a more serious question. Should we as the Boost community still encourage solutions and libraries solely for portability with ancient compilers? I'd say no, but YMMV. Boost will be still around 2, 5, or 10 years from now. What's the utility of adding such a _solely_ backwards oriented library from this POV? Indeed, I ask the community, do such libraries belong in Boost? If so, is the bar for acceptance of such libraries automatically and necessarily higher than libraries that introduce genuinely new capabilities in C++11? If so, what additional criteria must such a library meet?
Hi,
I think that there is a difference between Boost.Local and Boost.Move. Boost.Move provides an emulation of a C++11 feature on compilers that don't provides this feature.
As Hartmut said, Boost.Move is an infrastructure library needed by Boost itself. Move semantics is crucial. Local functions are not.
Boost.Local provides an emulation of a feature that has not been accepted to c++11. Note that I'm not saying that Boost.Local should not be accepted, but I'm sure that things will be different if Boost.Local provided an emulation for c++11 lambdas, that is, if in c++11 compilers the macros could be able to generate C++11 lambdas.
The question I have for the Boosters that don't like the local function approach is if they will accept as a good approximation of the following use of a lambda expression
std::sort(x, x + N, [](float a, float b) {return std::abs(a) < std::abs(b); });
the storage on a temporary as in
auto cmp = [](float a, float b) {return std::abs(a) < std::abs(b); }; std::sort(x, x + N, cmp);
If Lorenzo would be able to define a macro that could be used to replace the named lambda as in
BOOST_AUTO_LAMBDA(cmp, float a, float b, bool, ({return std::abs(a) < std::abs(b); })); std::sort(x, x + N, cmp);
could you consider that this is promoting good usage of C++11 features on compilers that don't provide them and be a good candidate for a Boost library?
Local cannot be an approximation of lambda. As mentioned again and again, a good approximation of lambda is already existing in Boost. Namely: bind, lambda and phoenix. I posted a Spirit example of lambda in action using Phoenix: http://tinyurl.com/7w2h2r9 Try as hard as you can, but you cannot ever come close to the clarity of the syntax presented there. Proponents of locals have cited error-messages generated by the compiler as a justification for Locals. Locals is probably a good workaround. But hear me out... Keep in mind that Boost has been at the forefront of C++ library development. It is because of these libraries that push the limits of C++ that we see the advancement in C++ that we enjoy now in C++11. Case in point is Boost Lambda authored by Jaakko Jaarvi (et.al.) which ushered in C++11 lambda: http://tinyurl.com/7um5yr4 If we chose to workaround the problem of C++ error messages in 2002, we would have ended up with something like Locals and there will be no experience that will pave the way towards C++11 lambda. Instead of working around the problems and offer less than elegant APIs and libraries for the sake of portability with ancient compilers, what we should do is push the C++ compiler writers to give us library writers more power to address the problems such as the often cited deluge of undecipherable error messages. TMP libraries are ubiquitous in modern C++. Avoiding them because of the problem of error messages is backwards thinking. What we should do instead is to find better solutions, not hide the problems. This is Boost! Regards, -- Joel de Guzman http://www.boostpro.com http://boost-spirit.com