Sorry I haven't been following this -- having back problems that prevent me from sitting down -- bad problem for a programmer :-( Anyway a couple thoughts.... On Wed, 13 Apr 2005 11:24:13 +0200, Douglas Gregor wrote
Here's the problem: we've been discussing and working on a sockets library for *years*. People have come, started working on it, and left before anything ever came up for review.
I think that having a 'bunch of individuals' is a big part of the problem. We really need a group of people with a shared vision to work together. That way one person walking away doesn't shut things down totally.
It's getting to the point where it's become embarrassing to Boost that we *don't* have a sockets library yet.
No reason to be embarassed. However, I'm disappointed that we are continuing to just discuss this. We've discussed the concepts and a working prototype of the core has already been built using boost practices: http://giallo.sourceforge.net/doc/index.html Yet we continue to go forth with individual efforts. To me, people with time and motiviation should help Hugo with his effort, which I believe implements the concepts we have been discussing for years. Not perfect, but a good start. If I had time I'd do it myself. If this doesn't work, we should really be laying out a collaborative plan to start over as a group.
Here's more motivation: the C++ committee is planning to finish the next revision of the C++ standard in the next few years, and I stress *few*. Boost has been a wonderful source of libraries for the C++ committee, and C++ would be greatly improved if the next version
Agree -- Boost has really helped close the 'library gap' for C++ compared to other languages. Sockets is a big gaping hole...
of the standard library contained a sockets library... this library could be that library, but we have to finish it, review it, and be sure it's right. We can't review what doesn't come up for review. "Finished" is more important than "complete".
Like filesystem and some other libs I think we all agree that the only way this will happen is if we get a core and build. But it is still possibly a multi-year effort and I think clearly too much for a single author -- unless they have full time to devote to it... Jeff