Re: [boost] Procedure to contriube to existing library

From: Robert Ramey (ramey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-10-25 17:33:55

Janek Kozicki wrote:
> Robert Ramey said:     (by the date of Wed, 25 Oct 2006 12:52:48
> -0700)
>
>> I would suggest zipping up your whole package - code changes, new
>> tests, documentation
>> etc and uploading it to the "vault".
>>
>> This will let other users who might find it useful add into their
>> code/projects and
>> permit you to get some feed back.
>
> whooops ;) Not what I did. Robert did you get my
> 07-tree_archive.tar.gz ? Should I upload it to vault?

In this instance you got lucky.  I just happened to be working on
something very similar to what you had in mind.  Great minds
work alike.  So I handed my version to you - which you finished
and handed back to me.  Which I haven't yet handed back to you yet.

Also note that our "GUI serialization editor" extension consists
of a new archive rather than alteration of the library itself so
we know for a fact that it can never break anything that
currently works.  Of course that makes it easier to deal with.

So this would be an unusual case.

More typically what happens I get some half-baked idea for
a new feature or change that someone thinks it would be a good
idea for me to implement in the library.  I don't mean to use
the term "half-baked" in a perjorative way.  Its just that there its
a longer road than it first appears to get from some great idea
to something that can be fit into boost.  Working code is the starting
point - not the end point.

> But unfortunately I don't think I will currently find time to prepare
> tests for that, and other required stuff. Probably later this year.

And I think a lot of programmers miss out on the opportunity to have
their stuff a lot more widely used.  If you want your fair share
of programmer immortality you have to commit yourself to
building a complete package ready for someone else to use.  Now
I think our "GUI serialization editor" might inspire a lot of interest among
current users of the serialization library.  But since these users
have other stuff to do (That's why they're using our library in
the first place!!!). It has to be very easy and fast (20 min max) to learn
how to use.  And that means a good documenation and example.

On the other hand, if getting your fair share of immortality isn't
important - what are we doing? Coding for its own sake?  I realise
that coding is the "fun" part.  But as one gets older, "fun" isn't
enough - you need to know that your work has some real
value.  So in my view its not done until the customer buys it and the 30 day
money back guarentee expires.  Of course we don't sell Boost
libraries (maybe we should) so we don't get that kind of feedback.
But we do get some idea that it meets users expections from the
mailing list.  I guess that'll have to do.

Robert Ramey