Re: [boost] Reducing dependency on Boost.Regex

On 3/13/23 5:54 AM, Boris Kolpackov via Boost wrote:

John Maddock via Boost writes:

This implicit "if you don't include the header then you don't need to link the dependency" approach doesn't scale well to cases where Boost is split into individual packages which are managed by a package manager.

Right. This is a built-in deficiency of the package manager approach. Dependencies are dependent upon the actual end user application and cannot be logically discerned a priori by any package manager. Contrary to what one would hope, the package manager is not a panacia and trying to make it into one is a hopeless quest which leads to pointless efforts to "eliminate dependencias" and create "standalone" libraries.

When the package manager undertakes to provide a Boost library, it should come with all the dependencies that could be needed for any usage scenario, unless certain features are explicitly not enabled (which is essentially what we have done -- not enabled regex by default in a bunch of libraries; I suppose we could have instead not enabled ICU in regex by default).

This mini-history illustrates my point above. More thinking is required on this subject. Perhaps the role of the IDE needs to be expanded or ... ? Robert Ramey

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