Joel de Guzman wrote:
The Boost libraries is nothing compared to the list that Source Forge provides, yet no one complains about being overwhelmed by SF's immensity. It's actually an ingredient to its success!
But would you feel the same way if you had to download everything on SourceForge in order to use any part of it? :-) As boost grows (and grow it must), it is inevitable that it move to a more modular distribution mechanism. If boost had something like a cygwin installer which let you install individual libraries (and the libs they depend on!) the OMG-boost-is-sooo-big-and-scary arguments will simply go away, and we will have removed one more (perceived) barrier to adoption. Also, I had the good fortune to have dinner with Scott Meyers this evening, and he asked why C++ didn't have the equivalent of Perl's CPAN -- that is, a huge repository of useful code to which anybody can submit. No releases. No quality assurance. No reviews. Survival of the fittest. Here's a wacky thought: can we turn boost-sandbox into CBAN (the Comprehensive Boost Archive Network), and cherry-pick the best libraries from CBAN for inclusion in boost? If anybody could make something like this fly, it's boost. We'd need to look closely at the CPAN model to find out why it's successful. (And for the record, I don't find boost overwhelming either.) -- Eric Niebler Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com