[boost] Crisis, What Crisis ?

Subject: [boost] Crisis, What Crisis ?
From: Francisco José Tapia (fjtapia_at_[hidden])
Date: 2014-05-18 16:58:49

When , in previous days, I had read messages about the dead of Boost, I
stopped to think about it. I think Boost is not dead, even , it have an
excellent health, but have problems related with the growth , in the same
way than when a young, pass to be adult. Many things must be done in a
different way.

 Every day I see new developers proposing new ideas. If one day, you don't
see new ideas and new developers you can certificate the death of Boost.

 The value of Boost compared with other libraries is that the code is
tested, and a company trust in Boost and use their libraries in their
internal process and applications, this is not true with many others
libraries.

 I think we must separate the interest of the Boost users and the Boost
developers. The developers, usually, are people with great level of
knowledge and experience , and the users usually don't have that level. Due
this , many times times, the interest of the developers and the users don't
agree. Many of the new libraries proposed, in absence of a detailed
explanation, are incomprehensible by the majority of the users.

 If you don't improve the design of the opponent, copy it. Perhaps we must
learn about others web as stack overflow , and extract ideas for our web
system. I think we must extend the mechanism used for the errors, to the
consults of the users. Must be easy and don't need to inscribe. The actual
mechanism of the list , I think is appropriate for the developers.

 Many of the Boost libraries are included in the C++ standards, this show
the quality of the library. But I don't think that the people use a boost
library, being included in the standard and provided by the compiler. I
think we must design an ordered close of that libraries, and locate in a
part for to provide utility to the users of old compilers. This reduce the
number of libraries and help to improve the clarity and simplicity of the
library.

 Boost had become a very big structure, and perhaps , the actual procedures
for to take decisions are not appropriate, in the same way that there are
people with a great knowledge and experience and other just arrived, and
their opinions can have the same value. I think it is a good idea to create
an executive board, elected between the Boost members, in order to take the
important decisions.

 One of the first decisions is what to do with the libraries pending of
revision, and the acceptance of new libraries without reviewer. As
commented before, we can have libraries very interesting for the
developers, and uninteresting for the users, and the opposite.

 My library COUNTERTREE,( parallel algorithms over Red-Black trees, with
random access iterators) is waiting since near two years ago. It's
something new, don't exist nothing similar. I had showed to companies (Intel
, Google, Valve ...), universities (Stanford, Texas A&M, Carlos III , Stony
Brook...) and people of the C++ environment ( Scott Meyers, P.J.Plauger , ) ,
with a great acceptation. But in their home, Boost, is waiting since near
two years, and a good idea stopped is a dead idea.

 I would like to know if it is interesting in Boost, in order to continue
with the development ( there are many algorithms and functionality for to
do ), or if it is not interesting, spend my time in others questions,
leaving frozen the code.

 These are only my opinions, open to discuss and new ideas. I am sorry ,
because the English is not my native language, and it's hard for me to
express the details of my ideas.

 Anyway, I offer my work and my collaboration, for to improve OUR Library.
If I can be useful, please, say me and I will try.

Yours

Francisco Tapia

fjtapia_at_[hidden]

 You can find the code and the documentation in my web pages in dropbox

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8437476/works/countertree_2.0/index.html

 or if you prefer in a git format https://github.com/fjtapia/countertree_2.0