[Quantlib-dev] Feedback request 2 - Boost

[Luigi B. <lui...@fa...>]

Hi all,
     part 2 of 3 in a feedback-request frenzy:

as reported e.g. in <http://www.cuj.com/documents/s=8890/cujexp0310sutter/> 
the powers that be have selected a few features for inclusion in a future 
addendum to the C++ standard, mostly borrowed with minor modifications from 
the Boost library (<http://www.boost.org>). Most notably, a shared_ptr 
class was accepted which supersedes our Handle---but also other nice toys 
which we could put to good use. Now, in the most optimistic case, it will 
take years before this is fully standardized. However, eventually we'll be 
wanting to eighty-six our homegrown solutions and replace them with the 
hallowed and standard ones. And honestly, I'd rather do it sooner than 
later---hopefully the number of our users will increase and make it more 
and more difficult to make such changes.

Hence the question: should we start using boost? I'm not advocating a fast 
switch---personally I'd make the full migration in as much as three 
releases (one using boost if available and falling back to our thing if 
not, one requiring boost but still providing typedefs for the old names, 
one removing the last traces of our once beloved classes.)

Let me know what you think.

Later,
	Luigi