On Sun, Sep 7, 2008 at 2:21 PM, Rene Rivera <grafikrobot@gmail.com> wrote:
In the case of my use case I needed a way to remove "searching relative to the including file directory" aspect of ("") includes. This is because the library includes headers as (include "a.h") which *never* gets around to searching extra include paths I specify because it always finds the one in the including dir first.
Ah, now I see the problem. I misunderstood.
You misunderstood. Specifying the search paths works. But removing the local including dir from the search path is impossible.
Indeed.
That would be because AFAIK all Boost headers start with "boost/..." and don't reference local includes. But moving to preferring ("") will likely encourage library authors to rely on what is essentially non-portable compiler behavior. The use of (<>) includes is technically also non-portable but is currently universally portable or can be made that way.
So it sounds like libraries should prefer <>, and the only time "" should be used is in project specific headers (i.e. won't be reused). But then often times project specific code ends up being generalized into a library at a later date, at which point it should be <>, so shouldn't you just always use <> then? --Michael Fawcett