X3 documentations should be more visible (Splitting Spirit repositories)

[Flamefire]

When I open the documentation spirit 2 is shown: https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_86_0/libs/spirit/doc/html/index.html

Only a remark-like comment at the bottom reads:

For the newest (C++14) version, please follow to Spirit.X3

I found that a bit hard to find when looking for the "normal" documentation.

[ribbon-otter]

I would like to second this. I only learned the spirit 2 was not the most recent version because I was looking for exact source code so I could read the headers.

[saki7]

We actually need to make the root index point to X3, and link V2 from there (suggested by boostorg/spirit_x4#15)).

[apolukhin]

It would be nice to have the Spirit.X3 as a separate library, without all the legacy of classic Spirit.

Some modern projects try hard to reduce dependencies and watch the module dependencies at https://pdimov.github.io/boostdep-report/develop/module-levels.html. Moving the X3 into a separate repo would drop most of the pre C++17 boost::* dependencies, making the X3 much more attractive to users

[saki7]

@apolukhin Thanks for your attention. We once had conversation with Peter Dimov and he also said we should split subcomponents. However, at the beginning of that conversation, I insisted on removing Spirit.Classic (after certain period of deprecation period) and thus the debate heated up too much. Eventually we had a consensus that we're going to split (not remove) Spirit.Classic. Peter told us that it's going to be easier if we let Peter do the actual work, but the migration didn't take place since then. Perhaps Peter is busy.

My current opinion is that we should split all Spirit subcomponents into distinct repositories:

• Classic
• V2 (Qi, Karma, Lex)
• X3

@apolukhin I want to make this happen. What can we do right now? Should we wait for Peter?

[apolukhin]

Let's ask @pdimov :)

Peter, is it OK for @saki7 to make separate repos in boostorg/ to separate old and modern Spirit implementations?

[saki7]

FYI, Spirit.X3 is now totally self-contained thanks to #817.
Classic was already self-contained thanks to Joel's historical efforts.

[pdimov]

I already forgot everything we discussed, so could you please bring me up to date? What is the specific split we're considering, that is, how should the split repositories be named, and what would their directory structure be?

[saki7]

The only explicit consensus we have is that we split Classic into the separate repository. But that consensus was made 4 months ago and the situation has changed. I recently managed to make X3 self-contained too, so I'd suggest splitting all 3 subcomponents into 3 distinct repositories:

• boostorg/spirit-classic
• boostorg/spirit-v2
• boostorg/spirit-x3

The only subcomponent that has trivial content is Classic, which consists of classic/*, include/boost/spirit/home/classic/* and include/boost/spirit/include/classic*.hpp.

V2 and X3 are both self-contained in C++ source code level, but they still share the same parent directory, e.g. test/ and doc/. So if you demand the comprehensive list of files, that requires a lot of communication and I believe it's nonsense to do that.

If you can give me the organization-wide privilege then I can do all above work myself. If you're afraid of giving too much permission then I'd suggest creating 2 empty repositories (boostorg/spirit-classic & boostorg/spirit-v2) then give me full permission only for those.

[saki7]

If you choose to do the migration yourself then that's fine, I won't take it personally. But I think this should be done by a single person due to the communication cost.