From: David Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-09-29 05:59:26
"Andy Little" <andy_at_[hidden]> writes:
> In the case of Fusion. I need the library to create matrices which work with
> types other than double.
Not really. You could have decided the abstractions provided by the
library would be too expensive and coded everything by hand.
>>> And I am not sure I totally agree.
>>
>> If you're disagreeing, I think it's because I wasn't clear. I meant
>> that "ConceptGCC really deserves more attention than it is currently
>> getting."
>
> OK. The first question is... why? I think I can answer that for
> myself, but what is in it for the broader audience?
Having concept support in the language revolutionizes the way we
program with templates, and in particular, provides a massively
improved experience for the casual user.
> For myself an important issue is that I am, due to inertia, compiler bound. I
> love VC7.1. I love the IDE. (IIRC you call this ' screen scraping', but that's
> your problem).
No, I have never used that term, so that's your problem. Nyah nyah.
I think IDEs are great and vc7.1 is a good compiler.
> So that is a hurdle that ConceptGCC has to face for someone like
> me. I have my "comp.bat" file set up for checking that stuff compiles with gcc,
> but for effortless coding, I head straight for VC7.1. IOW your compiler/IDE has
> a great deal of power over what you do
Yep. That's why I am not tied to VS, as great as it is.
> And , maybe ConceptGCC has a similar 'problem'(It's not really a problem) to
> the one I have with Quan, but probably more severe, in that most people are
> bound to old C style libraries, which frankly don't have a hope of compiling
> with ConceptGCC, due to the average *useful* 'Hack' optimisation's that have
> been applied. It's simply inertia again.
I don't know why you'd think that. If the library compiles with G++,
it should compile with ConceptGCC.
> I think what C++ needs most of all, is a standard GUI, because with
> that, it would be easy to plug ConceptGCC, the compiler, into a
> standard IDE.
That's what I do with emacs. It works almost dreamily well.
> And with a standard IDE, it would be quite easy to
> apply a couple of switches to switch compilers...
Who needs switches? I just hit F7 and modify the compiler name in the
command-line I have stored up for invoking bjam before hitting return.
Anyway, you can do all this compiling with bjam from within VS's IDE.
I know people do that.
> So, of all the libraries that C++ should have, I think that a standard GUI is
> the most important, because it would be so much easier to try out and
> demonstrate major changes to C++.
I think an easily modifiable compiler framework written in C++ would
strike lots closer to the mark than a standard GUI, for that purpose.
> Simply put, ConceptGCC needs a nice UI to show it off, and its a bit sad that
> C++ has no way to provide that.
A nice UI to show off ConceptGCC? I'm giggling.
> I guess that is the root of the problem.
>
> ( And I am currently concerned with trying to make some inroads into that
> problem)
I wish you well. I think it would be cool, but I don't think it's
going to help much with core language development.
-- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com