Consider creating umbrella crate `malachite`

[Andlon]

Hi, thanks for this very nice library! It's amazing to have a great alternative to GMP that just builds without the portability problems.

So far I've only tried it out in a very basic benchmark, but I hope to use it more in the future, as I have some upcoming geometry processing tasks that will likely require exact arithmetic. I was a little bit puzzled at first because I was expecting a crate called malachite. Instead you have separate crates for integer and rational arithmetic. Whenever I want to learn about a new library, I often just type docs.rs/libname in my address bar - I must assume many other Rust users do the same.

For one, I think you should register the malachite crate on crates.io, because if someone else registers it, it will be very confusing for users of malachite.

Beyond that, I suggest that you consider the following:

• Make the malachite crate an "umbrella" crate that depends on the other malachite-* crates as needed. malachite would be the entrypoint for all users. That way the malachite docs on docs.rs would be a good entry point to the library.
• Make e.g. rational arithmetic optional under a (probably default) feature flag. That way users can opt out of rational arithmetic if they don't need it.

I think overall this would make the first experience for users a little more straightforward and cohesive, and types would be imported as malachite::Rational and malachite::Integer instead of malachite_q::Rational and malachite_nz::integer::Integer (I took the liberty of moving the Integer type to the top-level in this example).

What do you think?

[mhogrefe]

Thank you for your kind words!

Something like this has been in the back of my mind for some time. I'll incorporate it into the next release.

[mhogrefe]

Fixed in Malachite 0.3.0.

[Andlon]

Awesome! Looking forward to trying it out. By the way, I've been using malachite more actively for some geometry processing tasks in recent weeks, and it works like a breeze :-)