Re: Technical Excellence?

From: Peter Dimov (pdimov_at_[hidden])
Date: 2024-04-02 15:21:57

Ivan Matek wrote:
> If there is some boost contributing for dummies so that I don't waste more
> time in PR  review for maintainers than I saved for them by renaming 8 uses of
> boost::array to std::array I would be happy to pick some tasks next weekend.

Unfortunately the procedure for bringing a library up to date with C++11 is
pretty convoluted in general; it's only easy if the library is actively maintained
and has up to date CI, and even then, dependency changes require updating
the CMakeLists.txt file.

For an "old" library, what I generally do is

1. Update (or add) Github Actions CI
2. Fix any test failures that the above has exposed (this happens surprisingly
  often and is sometimes not easy)
3. If the library has C++11 dependencies and therefore already requires C++11,
  update meta/libraries.json with the 11 requirement and drop 03 from CI
  (if not, add a BOOST_PRAGMA_MESSAGE that C++03 will be dropped two
  releases from now)
4. Add CMake jobs to CI. This requires adding test/CMakeLists.txt and
  supporting files.
5. Finally, change boost::array to std::array and remove the include of
  <boost/array.hpp>
6. Regenerate CMakeLists.txt using `boostdep --cmake libname`, if it was
  generated, or update it manually, if not, to drop Boost::array
7. See if anything broke on CI, and fix it

which... isn't generally something a new contributor can do on his own.