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Project: Boost-free Goblins, part 3

Ready, Aim, and Fire

After the battle-cry, and then calming down to make some preparation, I decided to take the shot. The target: boost::shared_ptr.

To Action

A quick search turns up that shared_ptr is supported in the STL's memory library since c++11. Well, that seems like an easy task. Let's take our script for a spin. 
tools/boostrm.sh shared_ptr memory
Now I have a bunch of std::shared_ptr replacing the boost variant. Seems like everything is in good order. After pushing it into the github to have Travis CI do the honors of compiling it, turns out, some boost::weak_ptr, apparently derived from boost::shared_ptr, was being casted into boost::shared_ptr, and they are not compatible with std::shared_ptr since that's not what they inherited. Well, after a bit of research, it seems the weak_ptr has a STL version. It seems like weak_ptr needs to go, too. 
tools/boostrm.sh weak_ptr memory
After another push into github, and another build run by Travis CI, it turns out that it conflicts with boost's serialize. This time, there's no easy replacement of it in STL. Full stop.

Catch 22

After staring at the boost code for it, I found that the old boost version being used is really the culprit: the old methods relies on calling the member function to serialize the object. The newer versions use helper functions and supports the STL variants. But earlier experiences taught us that using newer versions crashes the program. So my first bout with the boost ended in a bit of a loop: I was able to replace the objects, but in process lost some of the deprecated functionalities. They will not be a problem in the updated boost, except latest boost had caused us unknown errors. So now, we stand in an impasse: until we can progress far enough in development (i.e. remove more or all of boost), it may be too difficult to try updating the boost. To remove boost and test if it works well, we need to update to the later versions.

Lesson Learned

For now, Boost and I are at stand-off, slightly anti-climatic finish to my first attempt that wanted to take out just one object but ended up touching up on 3 different objects. If this is of any indication of the future, this war is going to be a long one. Still, I am interested in continuing the efforts: currently, another developer is working hard to get a Windows build to work, and one of the biggest stumbling block seems to be the Boost. Getting rid of it will simplify some of his headaches and make it possible to run the program in Windows quicker.
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