Subject: Re: Why We Should Use the STL (fwd)
From: Martin Sevior (msevior@mccubbin.ph.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sun Jun 04 2000 - 07:06:55 CDT
On Sun, 4 Jun 2000, sam th wrote:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2000 02:45:51 -0500 (CDT)
> From: sam th <sam@uchicago.edu>
> To: abiword developer list <abiword-dev@abisource.com>
> Subject: Why We Should Use the STL
>
> Now, I realize that this is going to cause controversy, but I hope we
> don't need to have flames.
>
> Currently, we use none of the STL. This is becuase we have been under the
> impression that templates were not well-enough supported on all the
> platforms we use. However, this is untrue.
>
Just to add some more background to this. The BELLE experiment to search
for CP violation in the neutral B-meson system, of which I'm member (see
http://bsunsrv1.kek.jp) makes extensive use of the STL in our analysis
code. This code runs on Linux, Sun and DEC alpha's using the gcc C++
compiler. Why don't use the Vendor compilers on the Sun and Alpha's?
Because slight differences in interpreting C++ semantics amongst the
compilers two years ago meant the code didn't work.
The BELLE analysis code is over an order of magnitude larger than abiword.
A full compile from scratch takes about an hour on a dual 400 Mhz PII.
Abiword takes about 2 minutes. The Libraries built are about 2 Gigabytes
of binaries. Admittedly a lot of the code is old Fortran accumulated over
the last 3 decades in beautiful open source fashion. Still there is a lot
of C++ STL stuff too.
Now it might be that the Vendor compilers from Sun and DEC may now work
the same as gcc but we don't know because no one has the time to test,
debug and tweak in the inevitable issues. I think I'd rather Sam worked on
his xhtml importer than sort out STL issues between VC and gcc (the main
two compilers), but hey, this is a GPL program and Sam can do what he
likes :-)
Cheers
Martin
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