On Sat, Jun 27, 2020 at 9:02 AM Glen Fernandes via Boost < boost@lists.boost.org> wrote:
(A new subject, since the thread has evolved past the Text review result).
Agree, thanks.
I spend part of my time in the C++ standards committee. I spend part of my time in Boost.
Many of us do.
If there is benefit of Boost to any other entity, be it the LEWG of the committee, or some organization, that's great. i.e. When Boost is adopted by some organization, or when Boost components go into the standard, that's just a bonus.
It used to not just be a bonus -- it's the prime reason Boost exists. If it no longer has that mission we should make that clearer.
But Boost itself shouldn't compromise on quality - in its review process or what it ships in a Boost distribution, to serve any of those other interests.
That is a decision for the Boost community to make, while there is still a community. If all C++ library development goes elsewhere then there won't be much left.
Putting a bunch of experimental libraries into a Boost release just because people have proposed them for standardization is not something we should do.
I disagree. Consider how painful it is for a c++ programmer that wants to contribute to the review proposed libraries for the C++ standard. And by that I mean, go and use the implementation. In my case I was doing this for c++20 -- it was super painful. Aside from the time it took to go pull from different places, compiler support and library quality/robustness was all over the map. In the past, when 90% of the things went thru Boost this meant downloading Boost and going to town. When TR1 came there was a special Boost package for it. The regression system would let you know where it worked and where it didn't. If someone wants to, they can should just start their own project full
of libraries that have not undergone any kind of formal review, and convince OS distributions to start including that as part of their packages based on its own merits.
As you know well, the proposals for the standard are undergoing a formal review, it's just not a Boost review. And just so my intention is clear -- my goal is to increase the review of the proposals that make it into the standard. In my opinion the bar too the standard needs to be raised a couple more levels. After sleeping on it I like the idea more than ever -- so maybe I'll work on it. And if Boost doesn't want to distribute it then it's more of the same mind share drain away from Boost. I think it would be fine to ship the proposed elements outside the main distro until it went thru a normal review. Ideally we'd get more authors to submit to a boost review and come under the tent. Maybe we could have some of the 'boostification' work done by Summer of Code students. Maybe this will led to more libraries like asio that can ship standalone and in Boost as well. In case there was any misunderstanding on this point: Zach's goals of
standardization are his own, and in Boost we don't have to be concerned with them. Because we're not changing the review process because of them, and he's not asking us to.
Understood, but we should care about his effort to standardize. Unicode is hard, it's a mess in C++, and average programmers could use a Boost (sorry, so sorry, not sorry :). Ideally what Zach proposes will ship under the Boost banner first. Why? So more than the maybe 20 people on the committee will look at it before the ink is dried and it ships with compilers. Jeff