Re: [cpp-netlib-devel] cpp-netlib status (including Pion integration)

[Matt T. <mat...@gm...>]

Heya Dean,

> I'm currently really busy with the day job taking on a more important
> role in the team.

I sympathise with your "pain"!  ;)

> I personally am already using cpp-netlib in a couple of production
> projects already and I can say it's proven to be stable enough for
> REST use cases. I have successfully used cpp-netlib to interface with
> Amazon AWS in a previous project and I think that's good enough
> quality to build software around (if I may say so myself). ;-)

I've been putting together a few small applications using cpp-netlib
but I'm about to integrate it into our main codebase and so will be
relying on it heavily over the next couple of weeks/months.

I've got a couple of specific issues/queries but I'll leave them for
another email.

After spending a bit of time looking over the codebase I'd agree that
the quality of the code is pretty high.  It's initially quite dense
(mostly due to the fusion compile-time templates and tags) and
documentation is a little sparse (are you considering publishing the
doco?) but once you get a feel for it the design seems sound and the
code solid.

> The server-side HTTP implementation however is something that I'm
> currently fighting for to be released by my employer as Open Source
> software. We've been using this HTTP server internally in production
> and has proven to be flexible, extensible, and high performance enough
> that I think it's worth the wait.

Good luck with that, I'm sure the C++ community would appreciate it.
FWIW we're currently using a modified version of one the boost::asio
examples to handle incoming http requests.

> I am personally waiting for the next standard before implementing much of the things I'm envisioning for the library.

I'm looking forward to the next standard too but I wouldn't have
thought it would hold you up too much?

> More specifically, I'm waiting for:
>
> - standardized futures

Absolutely.  Anthony Williams has been doing some great work in this
space (http://www.justsoftwaresolutions.co.uk/files/futures_documentation.html).
 Looking forward to seeing his future library in boost soon (as I
recall it's been accepted but not integrated yet).

> - rvalue references and move semantics (for better performance)
> - variadic templates
> - auto and decltype

All useful, for sure.  I'm also keen to see lambdas.

> Much of the code would work without these features but if writing more
> and more features would be an effort that later would have to be
> re-written I'm thinking of deferring the bulk of the work for later.

Well, boost certainly appreciates compatibility with older compilers
so if you are going for acceptance...  :)

> In the meantime though, you can get the latest released version and
> try using it in your project -- we would love to hear what your
> experience is like. In case you need anything specific addressed, I'm
> sure we can work together to make it happen.

Will do!  I've been hesitant to post because I haven't really
understood the library well enough but I think I've got enough
experience now that I (hopefully) won't be wasting everyone's time.

Thanks for such a prompt response.

Cheers,
Matt