Re: [boost] [asio] Issues piling up

On 10/11/2018 8:08 PM, Vinnie Falco via Boost wrote:

On Thu, Oct 11, 2018 at 3:37 PM Edward Diener via Boost wrote:

...

Just say here you would like to maintain the asio library

That's nice in theory, but Boost.Asio is generated by this script which runs on the stand-alone version of the source code:

https://github.com/chriskohlhoff/asio/blob/master/asio/boostify.pl

Are you saying that their is code in Boost asio which relies on asio code outside the Boost repository. That does not seem like a good situation to me, unless that other code is publicly accessible. Even then it is better if all code directly related to a library is contained within the Boost repository of that library. I am of course not talking about some 3rd party library code which is popular and publicly accessible by everybody.

Making changes directly to Boost.Asio would essentially cause a fork, so this isn't really an option. Anyway as Andrey said, it should be up to the author to decide whether to bring on a helper.

We don't have to make changes to Boost.Asio directly, we can just submit pull requests to the stand-alone Asio for new features and bug fixes, as these people have done:

https://github.com/chriskohlhoff/asio/pulls

Unfortunately, few if any of these pull requests get a response from the maintainer, which brings us back to the problem described in the original post...

There are quite a few useful, complete features which contributors have taken the time to develop and submit but which have languished with no response, sometimes for years. Examples:

Added wolfSSL Compatability for Asio instead of OpenSSL (5 months) https://github.com/chriskohlhoff/asio/pull/321

LibreSSL compatibility (1 year 7 months) https://github.com/chriskohlhoff/asio/pull/196

Add DTLS support to asio (2 years) https://github.com/chriskohlhoff/asio/pull/129

This one in particular is so sad, people have come back periodically to beg for attention to the issue but they are met with silence:

Fix #116: Enables ECDHE temporary parameters in ASIO SSL # https://github.com/chriskohlhoff/asio/pull/117

Some of these pull requests even manage to elicit lively and productive discussions and revisions, but there's no official response.

It would be nice to be able to close issues in Boost.Asio which are no longer relevant or resolved, to reduce the noise.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that someone else should maintain the library. I am only bringing attention to the fact that there is a lack of official responses to issues in Asio's respective repositories, and that pull requests are often ignored. This affects me indirectly, since Beast is built on Asio. For example, I have to keep hearing from users about the "Boost.Coroutine is deprecated" warning:

https://travis-ci.org/vinniefalco/beast/jobs/439893521#L1212

This is because Asio uses Boost.Coroutine which is supposedly deprecated. But there is an impasse between the authors of those respective libraries (Boost.Coroutine2 requires C++11, and Asio only requires C++03). And me and my users are the casualties.

I think if an author and/or maintainer of a Boost library is not at all responsive to PRs and bug reports Boost should be able to assign another maintainer. But of course the current maintainer should be contacted first to see what his response to such a situation would be. I just do not want to discourage anyone who is capable and wants to help maintain a Boost library for which the current maintainer(s) are not addressing problems. We have far less maintainers than we have libraries so it is natural to want to encourage any capable person who wants to be a maintainer of a library which is not being actively maintained well.

Regards