RE: [boost] Review: Boost Coding Guidelines

From: Philip Nash (philip.nash_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-07-25 10:25:28

Hi all,

I've just joined this list, so forgive me for jumping in on a thread I
haven't even seen the start of...

> On Tuesday 24 July 2001 20:44, David Abrahams wrote:
>
> Is there really (or can there be) general agreement about which things
> should be guidelines and which should be requirements?
> > Is there really a consensus that something derived from the proposed
> > document is appropriate? How can we answer these questions?
>

[..]

> Regarding which semantical guidelines should be requirements, I
> completely
> agree with Beman:
> 	"Once a  set of guidelines has been widely used for a
> period of time, and
> 	corner cases identified and dealt with, then you can lobby
> for applying
> 	more of the guidelines more of the time."

Sounds logical - a sort of "beta test" for requirements.
If we take that literally, maybe it would be an idea to propose certain
guidelines (those that you suspect could be promoted to requirements at some
point) to a new status, say, psuedo-requirements (or beta-requirements).
These would be guidelines that you would be expected to follow as
requirements, unless you can demonstrate a good reason why they are
impractical or unworkable (or just too damn awkward) in your particular case
during a peer review - which would make it easier to maintain metrics that
could be used in deciding whether they become "widely used" enough to become
requirements (or need amending etc).

I suspect this is more-or-less what happens already, but perhaps the process
could benefit from such a formalisation?

[)o
IhIL..