Re: [boost] [git] neglected aspects

Subject: Re: [boost] [git] neglected aspects
From: Dave Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-02-28 15:19:21

on Thu Feb 09 2012, Tim Blechmann <tim-AT-klingt.org> wrote:

>> I am interested in your views here. I have had good success with git and
>> monolithic projects. How would you go about working on your library and
>> then pushing to the central repo. Would you envision that the central
>> repo is nothing more than a shell pointing to submodules that are the
>> "real" library repos? 
>
> the semantics of git submodules is a bit weird: if you check out a new 
> revision of the top-level repository, the submodules won't be updated 
> automatically, but you need to run `git submodules update' manually ... i am 
> using submodules for tracking some external dependencies and in my experience 
> 70% of the compile failures of my users are related to submodules getting out 
> of sync.
>
> for a project like boost, i'd therefore suggest to avoid submodules. the 
> advantage however is that the full git repository of boost is few hundred mb 
> ...

We don't need to use submodules. /Maybe/ the people who are packaging
integrated boost releases (i.e. the release team) might want to use them
as a way of recording an integration state, but most Boost developers
and users should never need to touch them.  Instead, we want to use an
installation system like 0install to gather a library's dependencies and
make them available to the build system.

-- 
Dave Abrahams
BoostPro Computing
http://www.boostpro.com