Re: [boost] Thoughts on Boost v2

Subject: Re: [boost] Thoughts on Boost v2
From: Stephen Kelly (hello_at_[hidden])
Date: 2014-05-16 14:23:29

Niall Douglas wrote:

> On 16 May 2014 at 17:46, Stephen Kelly wrote:
> 
>> There is clearly not agreement within Boost that anything should be done
>> at all regarding modularization, before a more 'big bang' break forward,
>> from a reading of the mail from Niall.
> 
> For the purposes of clarity, I am not a member of Boost. I do not sit
> on any committees, and have no representation nor standing with the
> community apart from doing some admin for GSoC. I would say that my
> opinions on this are so extreme that no one agrees with me, and I
> expect my presentation at C++ Now tomorrow to not be popular.

That's probably not fun, so good on you for that. 

Rá beag ach rá é go maith :).

> Here is what I think should be in a fork of Boost:

I either agree with or am indifferent toward a lot of what you wrote. I'll 
let others discuss 'what makes Boost Boost' and shouldn't be changed.

> 8. Reusable utilities in a submitted library need merging into some
> common utilities library which follows the STL conventions. Other
> than that, no source code, naming conventions, namespace or anything
> else needs converting or changing. 

I do think there is a lot to be said for consistency in naming and API (and 
documentation, as you wrote :) ).

> Thoughts?

Part of the value of Boost v1 currently is branding. Any group of developers 
could create 'a set of modern-idiomatic c++ libraries', with some 
equivalence to some Boost libraries (or as a fork of them), appealing to the 
modern needs that arise when you already have C++11/14 as a base.

However, Boost has a greater chance than any other group of creating 
something credible and that the rest of the C++ community can get behind, 
partly because of expertise, but also partly because of branding. So, make 
sure such a v2 fork is called 'Boost' or is definitively 'the son of Boost' 
to keep that. I'm still not certain about how the Boost community operates 
and makes decisions (partly consensus, partly not), but I suspect there's 
some work to do there to get people on-board with something like this.

Thanks,

Steve.