Hi Sean -- A couple thoughts and pointers below: Sean Parent wrote:
I _really_ wish that I had enough time/resources on my team to take some parts of ASL and contribute them to Boost. However, my teams focus currently needs to stay on the higher level libraries (which I don't think are ready for Boost yet) and we simply can't afford the time to go through the submission process.
But I'm 100% supportive of Lubomir's contribution of GIL (Lubomir is not on my team, and I'm thrilled that he can take the time for this submission to Boost - just I'm I'm thrilled that we were able to release it as part of ASL). GIL is a very significant piece of work.
I'll just say a public thanks to yourself, Adobe, and the folks behind ASL for dipping their toe in the open source water. I think it will take several years to see the full effect, but it's very exciting to me to see you guys getting a chance to bring these ideas out into the world.
I will also support anyone who would like to borrow portions of ASL to contribute them to Boost.
This is really great -- it seems there is much common activity with other things happening in Boost (see below).
Some libraries that I think would be interesting to get into Boost with some comments about what I see as still needing to be done.
Forest <http://opensource.adobe.com/group__asl__tutorials__forest.html> .....
We have an active SOC project to build a generic tree... https://boost-consulting.com:8443/trac/soc/wiki/tree https://boost-consulting.com:8443/trac/soc/wiki/tree/design
Range Based Algorithms (using the boost range library) <http:// opensource.adobe.com/group__standard__extensions.html>
Eric Niebler has written some range algorithms in the vault -- be nice to see if he's covered all the ones you'all have: http://www.boost-consulting.com/vault/index.php?&direction=0&order=&directory=Algorithms
ZUIDs <http://opensource.adobe.com/classadobe_1_1zuid__t.html>
Hmm, I guess I would think zuid should be its own little library. There is already a GUID in the vault which again might benefit from collaboration here: http://www.boost-consulting.com/vault/index.php -- guid_v3.zip
md5 and SHA code <http://opensource.adobe.com/classadobe_1_1md5__t.html> <http://opensource.adobe.com/group__adobe__sha.html> Review and a short tutorial
I wonder if these would be logical additions to boost.hash which is new in 1.34? http://engineering.meta-comm.com/resources/cs-win32_metacomm/doc/html/hash.h...
ONCE <http://opensource.adobe.com/group__adobe__once.html>
ThreadID <http://opensource.adobe.com/group__asl__thread__id.html> Another good addition to Boost threads.
I don't know if we've really found an active maintainer for Boost.Threads....library abandonment is starting to become a much bigger issue for Boost as time goes on :-(
Final <http://opensource.adobe.com/group__adobe__final.html> I don't use inheritance much but this would be a nice addition to Boost utilities.
Yep.
Counter <http://opensource.adobe.com/classadobe_1_1counter__t.html> If boost would surface the lightweight mutex used in shared_ptr - this would go away.
I'll let Peter take this one...
value_t <http://opensource.adobe.com/classadobe_1_1value__t.html>
Agree, we'll have to push Kevlin to be more active ;-)
regular_object <http://opensource.adobe.com/ classadobe_1_1regular__object.html> This is a generalization of value_t (and boost any) - the idea is to be able to parameters an "any" object by concept. Mat Marcus has been doing a fair amount of work with this library. Needs better docs and tutorial.
Interesting. Don't know of any current Boost work here.
dictionary_t, array_t, name_t <http://opensource.adobe.com/ group__asl__tutorials__dictionary__t.html>
Don't know of any current Boost work here.
Copy-On-Write <http://opensource.adobe.com/ classadobe_1_1copy__on__write.html>
I guess the ever-languishing policy_pointer is the closest Boost work.
XML Parser <http://opensource.adobe.com/ classadobe_1_1xml__parser__t.html>
There is a Boost xml, but I haven't seen much Boost activity here. Property tree does some too, but full XML support is hard enough that it will be hard to do in Boost. http://www.boost-consulting.com/vault/index.php?direction=0&order=&directory=Progamming%20Interfaces
Wow - that's not a complete list (much longer than I set out to write - I forget how large of a library we've created!). If you're not aware of ASL - it's all released under the MIT license (making it fairly straight forward to get through a code audit). I'd be happy to help out anyone who has the time to prepare some of these libraries (or any other library from ASL) for inclusion in Boost - ASL would also benefit from such an effort.
Hopefully people will make you very busy :-) Jeff