Andy Little wrote:
The main points listed during review were: - Do we need a fixed_string library at all, is it worth the overhead? - Insufficient/confusing documentation . insufficient description of general design, design rationales and motivations . it says more about implementation details rather then the public interface . missing or insufficient documentation of parts of the library - The overall architecture of the implementation is too complicated and needs to be reworked - Missing interface for construction/interaction with std::string's - Unclear benefit to have the strings truncated to avoid overflows - Missing performance comparison with std::string and other alternatives - Compilation problems with the library as submitted for review
I'm wondering if this doesnt bring up a point regarding this review. In hindsight was fixed_strings ready for review?
http://www.boost.org/more/formal_review_process.htm#Review_Manager
In hindsight ,which is a wonderful thing, shouldnt review manager have stopped fixed_strings review? Can review manger stop a review?
I say this not to criticise Hartmut( I hope that experience as review manager will mean he will be interested to do the job again), but to enhance the character of the review managers role and point up this case as one example of what pitfalls review manager should look out for when thinking about future review requests.
Frankly, I was thinking about not to start the review for this library. And from todays point of view I shouldn't have done so. It's a learning curve for me as well and I certainly will be more proactive in this direction in the future. In the end I decided to start the review regardless of the problems because I thought (and I still think) it's worth to have discussions about the kind of paradigm the Fixed Strings library represents and even if we had these concrete problems we also have had some very interesting and clearifying discussions on this topic. Regards Hartmut