Re: [boost] [peer review queue tardiness] [was Cleaning out the Boost review queue] Review Queue member requirements

Subject: Re: [boost] [peer review queue tardiness] [was Cleaning out the Boost review queue] Review Queue member requirements
From: Niall Douglas (s_sourceforge_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-04-02 15:33:07

On 2 Apr 2015 at 11:56, Robert Ramey wrote:

> You're advocating a whole different way of reviewing libraries.  That's
> fine - but it has nothing to do with the incubator.  Should Boost change
> it's way of reviewing/certifying libraries the the question of implementing
> the new system would be wide open.

I'll tell you my ideal outcome, and it's what I'll pitch after your 
talk.

When a user thinks "I need a (C++) library to do X", they instantly 
think of http://choose.boost.org/. On that page is a set of user 
selectable fields which lets the user choose any ranking criteria 
they want, with results displayed with any detail columns of their 
choice.

In the live populated results of ranked libraries, a button marked 
"Download" downloads a ready to go tarball of that library and all 
its dependencies. Another button marked "Live Trial" opens an online 
web compiler with that library preinstalled.

Anyone can add any library to the database using a simple form. 
Boost's value add is that all results are scored by the same 
(hopefully high quality) rules, so if we choose the rules well then 
the best libraries bubble to the top, and the worst appear at the 
bottom.

As you correctly point out, that is a completely different Boost to 
the current one. But then it *is* a "Boost 2.0". And note that one of 
the ranking criteria can be "has passed a peer review", in which case 
you've just selected Boost 1.x type libraries only for the results to 
display.

Before you say this is pretty much what the Incubator does, I'll ask 
this: does the present implementation of the Incubator scale to 1,000 
C++ libraries? All being repeatedly updated on a daily basis by 
automated Jenkins and Travis CI instances? What about multiple 
versions of those libraries, as surely C++ 11/14 only versions of 
well known libraries are coming and the 03 edition remains supported. 
Indeed, if BindLib proves popular, we'll even be seeing API 
versioning become popular, so library X may depend on vA to vD of the 
library Y API, but won't work with anything else.

Niall

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