Re: [boost] RFC: Community maintained libraries

Subject: Re: [boost] RFC: Community maintained libraries
From: Edward Diener (eldiener_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-12-05 14:19:24

On 12/5/2013 2:03 PM, Niall Douglas wrote:
> On 5 Dec 2013 at 10:06, Steven Watanabe wrote:
>
>>> My proposal goes further than Beman's and gives "Community
>>> maintainership" to all but the most well-maintained libraries.  Each
>>> library would still have a named maintainer and this would be their
>>> role:
>>>
>>> <snip>
>>
>> This wouldn't help anything.  Every effort to create a group that does
>> general maintenance in the past has fizzled out when most of the
>> participants lose interest.  If we can't even manage this for a few
>> libraries that have no active maintainer at all, it's completely hopeless
>> to try to establish it for even more libraries.
>
> Agreed. Boost isn't like other open source libraries because it
> sprawls so much, so I can't think of anyone who uses every single
> library in Boost and therefore has a substantial interest in looking
> at Boost as a whole rather than as a pick-and-mix.

Boost consists of 120+ libraries. Some are interconnected, and many 
depend on a few core libraries, in particular MPL, but with that many 
different libraries it is really hard to think of Boost as a single open 
source "library".

>
> I've always personally thought the only way you'll get holistic work
> done on an ongoing basis is to appoint a paid civil service corp of
> engineers i.e. effectively a paid engineer or two who are appointed
> benevolent dictators. As no one appears to be forthcoming with the
> requisite funding, that is a pipedream.

Or you can get good work done when a single person or small group of 
people pay attention to a particular library. Boost is way too big to 
worry about a group of people paying attention to 120+ different libraries.

I think trusted people can be given access to key, core libraries of 
Boost as maintainers but it is foolish to think that any one person can 
absorb or pay detailed attention to more than a small subset of what is 
currently 120+ separate libraries and likely to grow to more.