Re: [boost] Boost is supposed to serve *the entire C++ community; it isn't Boost's goal to serve Boost's community*

Subject: Re: [boost] Boost is supposed to serve *the entire C++ community; it isn't Boost's goal to serve Boost's community*
From: Robert Ramey (ramey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2016-05-21 17:25:54

On 5/21/16 1:20 PM, M.A. van den Berg wrote:

>
> How can we speed of the review process, make it more efficient?

Actually, there is facility to speed up the review process right now.

It's the Boost Library Incubator.

One can go there download or checkout the submission, try it on his 
machine. And fill out a form which corresponds to the Boost Review 
process.  The library author - or anyone else is informed of this and 
can respond. All this can be done before there is any formal review 
announced.  The Review is kept available indefinitely for other users 
and is considered by the Review Manage when the formal review is 
underway.  In theory, there should be no bottle neck in the formal 
review process.  there's even an automated 1-5 star rating for each library.

In practice this doesn't happen as I had hoped.  People don't evaluate 
the library and write a review.  They wait until the review is announced 
then make their review.  This is OK but not what I hoped.

The true scarce resources and limit to the growth of boost are:

a) The submission of libraries which fail to meet boost requirements. 
Note I said "requirements" not quality standards.  By requirements, I 
mean having a boost file layout, tests, and documentation.  Currently 
there are 32 submissions in the incubator. There are thousands of source 
code packages out there but only 32 in submitted for review.  One reason 
is that even the low bar of the incubator is too high for most of the 
code that people think of as a library.  And in spite of clearly spelled 
out requirements such the above, I still get submissions which say 
things like:  See "headers for documentation".

b) the number of reviews and reviewers.  Typically there are only around 
6 reviewers who participate in a formal review.  This has been OK but I 
would like to see more.

To take an extreme: Apple reviews millions of apps, the reject very 
quickly and have a likely a semi-automated and rational checklist that 
developers can self asses their submissions against.

actually that's similar to the the incubator.  We verify that it meets 
the stated objective requirements.  This is a simple process which takes 
only a few minutes.

the other part of the apple process is user reviews. The incubator 
doesn't perform this function - that is left to the formal review 
process and the reviewers.

So if you want to speed up the process without breaking boost, volunteer 
as reviewer or review manager.

Robert Ramey