Remove Boost

[robertodr]

Boost is a heavyweight dependency and is only used to provide boost::any. We should find a way to pull the same trick without having to pull in the behemoth.

[bast]

Yes please!

[robertodr]

I'm not familiar with type erasure (the thing Boost Any does) so I need to read up a bit. I am sure it's removable, we don't need a fully general type.

[stigrj]

Can perhaps std::any replace boost::any? Requires C++17 though.

[robertodr]

I don't think we are ready for that quite yet... C++17 is still too cutting edge. Apologies from cutting you off from the discussion @bast and I had about Getkw. The current plan is to remove the compiled language bindings completely and have Getkw as just a Python module. See here and here for context and initial work. Mostly we'd want to keep the use as is now, with the difference that the parsed file is in JSON format (or YAML or anything else standard, really) The client (Python, C++, Fortran) will have to implement a JSON reader and there are many lightweight (header-only even for C++!) that do this already.

[bast]

Sorry from me for not communicating the blog post work to Stig. It would be great to get your input. I plan to send comments/PRs soon.

[stigrj]

No worries. It's great that things are happening 🙂

[robertodr]

I'll make sure to ping you next time I write a post, so you can give feedback 😸