Re: [boost] Boost.Experimental Re: [variant] Maintainer

On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 11:33 AM, Robert Ramey wrote:

On 7/2/15 7:44 AM, Gottlob Frege wrote:

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On Sun, Jun 28, 2015 at 10:29 AM, Agustín K-ballo Bergé wrote:

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Perhaps you'd wish to bring back the Sandbox (http://www.boost.org/community/sandbox.html), which has been superseded by standalone repositories since the move to Git.

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I think we need *something* for experimental libraries. Even if it is just someone's own git repository stamped (but not endorsed) with the Boost "brand". Or a page in boost.org listing current experiments. Or... something.

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I'd like some kind of experimental area that would help find the best possible libraries.

Why isn't the boost library incubator considered ideal here? In combination with github it already provides everything necessary - and significantly more already. And it's ridiculously easy to use.

Yes, of course; sorry. I wanted to mention blincubator in here somewhere. Maybe that is the right answer; I don't know enough to know. I think the other problem, or the real problem, that none of this solves, is getting wide adoption of experimental features. A constexpr branch is something bleeding edge users might use, and can maybe be done without much breakage - it is hopefully mostly addition. Changing something like boost::optional to have conversion to tribool instead of bool, or removing operator*() and forcing users to use get(), etc. Those are big breaks. I have no idea how to get users to actually be guinea pigs for those experiments. Should we have 3 different optionals to choose from? (Should we randomly select which optional you get in your boost distribution so as to get good A/B testing :-)