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Subject: Re: [boost] Distributed Development Process (was Re: Development Practices (Proposal Progress))
From: Dean Michael Berris (mikhailberis_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-01-19 02:50:04


On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 3:18 AM, Denis Shevchenko
<for.dshevchenko_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> I have read this document:
>
>    https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/wiki/DistributedDevelopmentProcess
>

Thanks for taking the time to read the document! :)

> There is a lot of good suggestions, and one of them is:
>
> "We want to enable the Boost project to scale up to have more than one
> distribution.
> As it is at the moment there is only one Boost C++ Library distribution
> which contains all the accepted libraries."
>
> IMHO, it's very good idea. But if we have several Boost distributions - what
> if library A depends on library B, but A and B placed in *different*
> distributions?
>

I think once the document is more complete, it would amount to
basically saying: all distributions that have the same release
version, will be parts of one whole boost distribution.

So then you can pick which distributions you want, and install them in
the same location, each one over-writing the parts that are common,
and there's basically not going to be any difference. If you do this
with all the available distributions, you get in the end a single
distribution that contains all the accepted libraries.

The reasoning for this is so that there can be more release managers
that manage just part of the whole Boost library. This alludes to the
similarity with Linux subsystems where you have maintainers that
basically ensure that the subsystems they maintain are up to snuff.
This allows us to have more release managers, as well as limit the
amount of work that release managers need to do for the specific
distributions they manage.

So in Boost's case, the union of all distributions is the single boost
distribution that we have now. If you want all the Boost libraries,
you get the monolithic distribution (like Linux installers) or if you
just want to get for example Spirit and all the libraries it depends
on and extensions that build upon Spirit only, then you get that
distribution.

This would be made easier once all the libraries are in their own
repositories where there are only tags/branches indicating which
version of that library is for general availability. :D

I hope this makes sense. :)

-- 
Dean Michael Berris
about.me/deanberris

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