Re: [Gearbox-devel] New submission: flexiport data comms library and replacement for the urg_nz library

[Alex B. <a.b...@ac...>]

Hi Tom,

> could flexiport possibly replace the current gbxserialacfr  at some
> point? it has the added benefit of already being cross platform and
> having lowlevel logging.
>
> Having two libraries that do the same thing seems to go against the
> grain of what gearbox is about.

In principal: one of the aims of Gearbox was specifically to skirt the issue 
of standardisation by allowing 'anything goes', including parallel 
implementations of essentially the same thing.  This was based on the 
observation that requiring a maximum of one implementation of anything (or 
agreement about one external dependency (eg a common threads library)) leads 
to (a) people getting bogged down in discussions rather than writing useful 
code, and (b) fewer contributors because people have different preferences 
and don't want to have to reach agreement.  This was discussed at length but 
only privately I think -- I just looked around the website and couldn't find 
anything to this effect, did it never make it into public written form?

In practice: Yes, flexiport looks like a more general solution and I'd be 
happy not to have to maintain a parallel version.  We've got a bunch of 
trials coming up though and we've done loads of testing with gbxserialacfr, 
so I don't plan to make a switch any time in the near future.


Cheers,

Alex