From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-08-14 15:28:43
Daryle Walker's Base-from-Member library is accepted by Boost subject to
two caveats:
* Issues raised during the review be addressed, particularly Ed Brey's
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/boost/message/15406. (Note that Daryle has
already dealt with some issues in an update in the files section.)
* The documentation needs to be modified to more clearly indicate that for
some applications the best use of the library is not to #include the code
directly, but to use it as a demonstration of how to hand-code the
base-from-member idiom.
This last point is the key issue with Base-from-Member; some users will
wish to view the library as a demonstration of the idiom or technique
rather than as code they will always reuse.
This seems to me to require some explanation. Some of the points are
specific to Base-from-Member, such as "When is it better to hand code?",
and so should be dealt with in the Base-from-Member docs.
But it also seems to me that Boost should have a page titled something like
"Demonstration Libraries" which Base-from-Member and similar libraries can
link to. It would describe the concept that we reuse code when there is a
good library code solution, but other times there is no applicable specific
code, so instead we reuse code idioms and techniques (for small-scale
problems), or we reuse design patterns (for large-scale problems). Links
to non-boost resources might also be appropriate.
Comments?
--Beman