In-Reply-To: <6.2.0.14.2.20050417091210.0840a328@mail.rudbek.com> vawjr@rudbek.com (Victor A. Wagner Jr.) wrote (abridged):
The shear size of boost bothers me in that I don't want to burden my source code control system unnecessarily.
21 meg isn't that much (for the headers)
Actually it's quite a lot. This is a "new tool" issue - once any new tool is incorporated into the code, we have to keep it around for ever, even if it proves useless and we stop using it 6 months later. It's a barrier to entry, and it would be a lower barrier if boost took 1 meg or 10k. Basically I am supporting the idea of splitting boost into a collection of small, independent packages. I don't know how big the subset I selected was, but it was probably nearer 10k. From memory it was operator.hpp, smart_ptr.hpp and static_assert.hpp, plus whatever they depend on (which I discovered by repeatedly attempting to compile). I didn't want to include anything I couldn't see an immediate use for. Instead I encouraged my colleagues to view the website and add anything they wanted from it. Nobody has yet done so, which I suppose weakens the claim that a small subset will lead to a bigger one.
The dependency issue bothers me too.
You'd seriously rather that people copy/paste code to reduce dependencies?
There's a trade-off. It depends on the size and complexity of the library code. For example, I once experimented with using operators.hpp to generate != from ==. The benefit seemed borderline. There is a hump involved in using 3rd party code, and for a one-line routine: inline bool operator!=( const MyType &a, const MyType &b ) { return !(a == b); } it hardly seems worth it. Operators.hpp has over 900 lines of code, full of #ifdef's for various compilers, templates and inheritance. To understand it you need to know about subtle language issues: for example how the inline "friend" generate non-member functions, or the nuances of the empty base class optimisation. The documentation is long and complicated. None of this can be understood at a glance, where-as the hand-written version above can.
I've had code break because a boost header somewhere redefined min and max.
where? when?
A few weeks ago. Probably using boost 1.31 - I'm not at work to check. I don't recall which header I #included. Probably shared_ptr.hpp.
the real problem is that MicroSloth [...] #define min and max as a result of using windows.h !!!!
I know. The point remains. Experienced programmers know that using any 3rd partly library can introduce problems. Boost is no exception. -- Dave Harris, Nottingham, UK.