Hello, I would like to gather some feedback on my plan for the future of the Boost.Operators library. As the maintainer, I have to admit it was a pretty easy job for the last years, as not much has happened. The codebase is full of work-arounds, but it seems to be pretty stable. Another member of the list recently suggested an enhancement, see <https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/5929>, which I think shows the first of two points that I would like to straighten out in the future: 1) The library currently mixes two domains, arithmetic operators and iterator helpers 2) No rvalue-support The first point, as already mentioned in the above ticket, could be solved by separating the two parts. I imagine the future Boost.Operators library to concentrate on arithmetic operators, while another, new library could concentrate on iterator and container helpers. Maybe there is an overlap with other libraries (Boost.Iterators), but I'll leave that to others. The (new) Boost.Operators library could provide a base for implementing the iterator helpers just like the current Boost.Operators library does - while there is no dependency in the reversed direction, i.e., the Boost.Operators library does not depend on iterators. The second point is actually a strong argument for a rewrite and a different interface. I have an implementation ready and as it turns out, rvalue-support could be used to optimize some cases *only* if the type itself is commutative. This property of a type is not taken into account in the current Boost.Operators library, which is why the new implementation has different bases, including a new set of grouped operators. See the end of this post for a list of the proposed bases. Note that the new grouped operators are also a consequence of taking commutativity into account, i.e., a field as a commutative_ring+dividable. Dropping some of the old grouped operators should not be a big deal, since grouped operators are more-or-less convenience only, the real functionality is in the "Simple Arithmetic Operators" (see current documentation). If there is a strong need, we could also preserve the old implementation as <boost/legacy/operators.hpp>, but I think it's also practical to drop it completely - old Boost versions are still available for those who need them. To sum up the plan: - Concentrate on arithmetic operators - Add rvalue-support - New set of convenience/grouped operators due to rvalue-support - Drop the old implementation, iterator support Someone else (Olaf?) then takes care of the iterator helpers. So, what do you think? Regards, Daniel ----------------------------- Proposed new base classes: equality_comparable less_than_comparable totally_ordered equivalent partially_ordered addable commutative_addable subtractable subtractable_left multipliable commutative_multipliable dividable dividable_left modable modable_left ring commutative_ring field andable andable_left commutative_andable orable orable_left commutative_orable xorable xorable_left commutative_xorable bitwise bitwise_left commutative_bitwise left_shifttable right_shiftable shiftable incrementable decrementable unit_steppable