on Sun Apr 01 2007, "Mårten Rånge" <marten.range-AT-gmail.com> wrote:
In my world I would then like to download the smart pointer boost package (with dependencies?) which should be a fairly small download. Due to a more manageable size I would then foresee that it would easier for me to get it into the source control system and into the build environment. Also, it would be easier for me to convince the systems architect that boost is worth more than the hassle it introduces (right now I can't).
As mentioned elsewhere by Manuel Fiorelli, http://www.boost.org/tools/bcp/bcp.html
Later when people see the benefit of boost and we want to do some text parsing I'd like to download the boost.spirit package and set it up.
Likewise.
And so on.
I would also think that packaging boost in different packages (a small base package and then perhaps each individual library as a package) would give benefits to the development of the new releases. Right now I have the feeling that getting a new release is rather daunting task. Which I guess comes from boost being a monolithic, large library that supports many different compilers and platforms.
No, boost is not even one library much less a monolithic one. Boost is a library collection. I've seen the dependencies among the Boost libraries graphed, and unlike some other development frameworks, which just show up as a big blob, Boost is neatly partitioned and the dependencies tend to be a unidirectional DAG.
By packaging boost into several different packages one could perhaps have different release schedules for different packages?
We've been over that question many times, and many of us disagree. Though Boost is not monolithic, there are enough dependencies among libraries that it's important they can all be released together in a state where they interoperate correctly. We do have a plan to speed up releases. Please see this thread: http://archives.free.net.ph/thread/20060514.212258.a8a17ce6.en.html Unfortunately the link to beman's original proposal is dead :(. Beman, do you think you could make that available again? Maybe just post the text to this list? As 1.34 approaches it's probably a good idea to get that back into the collective consciousness. -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com Don't Miss BoostCon 2007! ==> http://www.boostcon.com