[Dune] Boost Dependency on DUNE

[Jö Fahlke]

Am Mon,  1. Aug 2011, 20:46:52 +0530 schrieb Jayesh Badwaik:
> I am developing a module for some work and I have come to the conclusion
> that a boost:ublas library would be really helpful
> for my work. Especially, the Matrix
> Library<http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_47_0/libs/numeric/ublas/doc/matrix_expression.htm#matrix_vector_operations>.
> However, as I have gathered from the discussion, boost is not preferred as a
> dependency in
> DUNE core modules. And hence I am curious as to what are the reasons for it?
> Are there any specific reasons?

OK, I think that needs to be clarified a little.

What we are trying to avoid is that any of the core modules has a hard
dependency on external libraries.  The reason is that software installations
on really big supercomputers tend to be very old.  Often the software is
installed at the same time the supercomputer is build and essentially never
updated[1].  There is a good chance that there is no (recent enough) version
of Boost installed.

If we introduce a hard dependency on Boost in one of the core modules, Dune
will not work without Boost present.  Every Dune user is forced to install
Boost first if it is not present on the computer he want to run his
computations on.

But don't despair -- even without a dependency on Boost, you can still use
Dune and Boost together perfectly.  The difference is that we don't force you
to do so.

The topic of the discussion you're refering to was (among other things)
whether our strict "no dependency on external libraries"-policy is still worth
the work it means for us developers.  There is probably no final conclusion to
this discussion, it will probably come up again some time in the future, and
we may then decide that some external library makes life so much easier for us
developers that it is worth the burden it puts on Dune's users.  But when this
happens or whether that happens at all I cannot predict.

Bye,
Jö.

[1] The reasons for that are manyfold.  Often the software installation on a
    supercomputer is very special and updating the software may require
    coorperation from the manufacturer.  Supercomputers are used by a lot of
    poeple and downtime can cost a lot; updating software or even installing
    new software always brings the risk that something goes wrong.

-- 
Warum die Sonne verboten werden sollte: http://www.bastiat.de unter
"Petition".
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 828 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <https://lists.dune-project.org/pipermail/dune/attachments/20110801/dcb45dbd/attachment.sig>