[LLVMdev] lib/System Unleashed - Need Your Help!

[Vladimir Prus]

Hi Reid,

> The LLVM source base used to be dependent on boost but we have removed
> that dependency because it had a high cost for the relatively small
> portions of it that we needed. 

What's exactly was that high cost. Is that large size of boost itself, or some 
other problems.

> boost is a general purpose C++ library 
> that happens to handle filesystem things in a somewhat portable way.
> However, lib/System will handle signals, memory mapped files, program
> execution, and several other things that boost does not provide.

I understand, and was suggesting only boost::filesystem. On the other hand, 
I'm sure "other things" will be interesting to the boost folks as well, and 
your code might form a basic of a new boost library.

> Additionally, as compilers go, we'll probably end up supporting some
> esoteric platforms (Interix is already on the way) that boost does not
> support.

What kind of a system Interix is If it's POSIX with recent gcc, then I don't 
except any problems whatsoever. Even if it's not POSIX, but has decent 
compiler, I'm sure the relevant changes for boost::filesystem can be made and 
if someone is willing to do the testing, I'll be able to get the patches into 
boost CVS. 

> I imagine that if we need more of the kinds of things boost provides
> that we should revisit our design goal to remove boost from LLVM but I
> don't think we're there yet.

Ok, thanks for clarification.

- Volodya