Re: [boost] Boost Development Environment proposal

From: Douglas Gregor (doug.gregor_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-06-04 17:47:01

On Jun 4, 2007, at 2:01 PM, Peter Dimov wrote:
> As a Boost user, I simply don't use Boost components whose HEAD  
> versions are
> unstable.

Yep. One tends to learn this very, very quickly as a user of HEAD.

> As a Boost developer, if a dependency takes too much time to  
> stabilize, I
> sever ties with it and reimplement the parts I need. This is rare  
> since I
> have low tolerance for dependencies anyway. :-)

Ha!

> I understand that this mindset may be unusual. Still, I find the  
> idea that
> the trunk is assumed to be unstable a bit odd. The trunk should be  
> stable
> and everyone should work to keep it that way.

Yes. The problem is that the trunk becomes the Wild West when there  
is a release branch active, and it takes us *forever* to get it back  
into a release-ready state. It's a death spiral of a development  
process. Splitting into devel/stable is one way to fix it, because  
stable is based on *stable* code (i.e., what's on the 1.34.x branch),  
and devel is based on head (which is a bit of a mess at the moment).

If "devel" became stable, would we need "stable"?

        - Doug