minimize/avoid using boost in cogutil

[linas]

Boost header files in the cogutils header files are polluting downstream code (atomspace, opencog). We should try hard to avoid using boost. Its low-quality code, buggy, with assorted issues. In most cases, we don't actually need it for anything.

[linas]

Today, fyi, its opencog/util/Counter.h which is causing the issues - it got included in Handle.h, and thus spread to code everywhere. Surely there is some much simpler, more elegant way of solving this problem, than to use boost.

[ngeiswei]

What problem does it cause?

[ngeiswei]

@linas you keep repeating that we shouldn't use boost, that it is badly written and such. Personally the only issue I remember having was boost.graph, some naming clash that has been fixed years ago.

I mean if some boost implementation is too inefficient, sure let's use something else, but I don't think it's enough to turn down boost. Some things are extremely useful like boost.operators and boost.range, both used in the Counter code for instance. They save a great deal of code and I doubt they are inefficient (not test them though, I just think they are sufficiently simple that one can hardly code them inefficiently.)

[linas]

It just creates crazy bugs, hard-to-debug scenarios, cryptic error messages. As to efficiency/bugginess, the few times I've dived into boost code, it became clear that it was written by people who weren't good c++ programmers, and kind-of didn't know what they were doing. There's no quality-control in the boost libs, they accept whatever some college student created for some class assignment. Its a hassle; avoid the hassle.

[linas]

at any rate, we should not be putting boost includes into header files. For the example of Counter, it ended up in Handle.h, and then ended up everywhere in opencog. So I lost time last night trying to figure out why things broke because of this. Header files should be minimal, and only define/export what they promise to define/export, and not other unrelated functions.

[ngeiswei]

I agree about avoiding unnecessary includes (boost or else), for Counter it is impossible to avoid because it relies on boost.operator to define the class. However, if you'd like I can move the definition of HandleCounter out of Handle.h as it seems to be used only in the URE.