Re: [boost] Breaking existing libraries

Subject: Re: [boost] Breaking existing libraries
From: Tomas Puverle (Tomas.Puverle_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-11-21 10:44:07

-----Original Message-----
From: boost-bounces_at_[hidden]
[mailto:boost-bounces_at_[hidden]] On Behalf Of
boost-request_at_[hidden]
Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2008 5:42 PM
To: boost_at_[hidden]
Subject: Boost Digest, Vol 2373, Issue 4

> Yes, this is an unfortunate situation.  If you indeed want to try to
> make sure this kind of silent breakage doesn't happen again, there's
> something you can do about it: write a page of library maintenance
> guidelines on the wiki at http://svn.boost.org.  We are sorely missing
a
> policy on this, and when less-experienced library authors come along,
> they often don't hew to the same standards that many of us take for
> granted.  If you don't have write permission for the wiki, please let
us
> know and we'll send you an invitation.

Hello Dave,
 
This is a good answer but not the one I was looking for.  It's a
politician's answer, in that
it doesn't really answer my original query.  
 
Let me just put a few of my thoughts here:
 
What was described in my original email are bad practices in any
project, not just boost.  
Given that the boost developers are presented frequently as "the best",
it isn't unreasonable
to expect that they would understand that causing silent breakage (and
the other points I made)
is bad.  
 
It takes a lot of work for a library to get accepted and the library has
to meet very high standards.
However, it seems that once a library is accepted, the maintainer is
pretty much free to do what
they please.  I think it may be wise to apply the same level of rigour
to the continued development.
Do you think that a boost library that was broken should be rolled back?
 
About the wiki: The desire to solve this problem has to come from
within, not from without.  
Given how big some of the personalities are on this mailing list, do you
think it's likely they would listen 
to someone who has not contributed a complete library to boost?  
 
Finally, I'd like to mention that within a large organisation, it's not
possible to upgrade to the latest
version of boost as soon as it comes out.  The difficulty of rebuilding
all of the internal systems 
just makes this impractical.  As you are aware, a lot of people avoid
the .0 releases.  What does this
say to you?  I understand (and applaud) boost's efforts to try to to
eliminate this notion with tighter 
release cycles etc but the problem is that it's much harder to lose
people's confidence than to regain it.
 
I like using boost and am very grateful to all the developers who make
it happen.  Having said that, 
SNAFUs such as the current Boost.Range or the MT problem with
Boost.Function in 1.34 threaten to make
it irrelevant in "serious" development and relegate it to the position
of a great "toy library" you can see 
how C++ standard compliant your compiler is.
 
Kind regards,
 
Tom