Re: [boost] Metadata pull requests

Subject: Re: [boost] Metadata pull requests
From: Daniel James (dnljms_at_[hidden])
Date: 2014-08-19 09:53:01

On 19 August 2014 12:43, Niall Douglas <s_sourceforge_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> On 19 Aug 2014 at 7:12, Daniel James wrote:
>
>> >> I'll spend a bit of time improving that soon, so let me know if
>> >> there's anything missing.
>> >
>> > Can you add the following fields please:
>>
>> I meant missing from the documentation. I'm not volunteering to track
>> every possible piece of data available. Most of your requests don't
>> fit with the intent of this file, and belong elsewhere. It'd probably
>> be a bad idea for me to design the necessary data structures anyway,
>> as I'm not involved in any of the uses and would probably get them
>> wrong.
>
> Would you be okay if people added extra optional fields i.e. would
> your parser skip them without problem? I think between myself and
> Robert we can add some good optional metadata extensions.

It's possible to add extra fields, but I'd rather keep this file
fairly small and static. It shouldn't take a lot of work to write it,
and shouldn't need to be updated too often. It's also quite likely
that it will be replaced by something else in the future, especially
if we ever have a package management system. It's not intended to be a
permanent solution.

> If that isn't possible for you, any objection to an extra json file
> appearing in meta/*?

Not really, and even if I did, I don't have any special authority
here. I'd suggest making a proposal in a new thread. My concern would
be how much work this would require from maintainers. Currently the
metadata file is optional, and fairly simple.

Btw. if you're doing something with test data, it might be worth
looking at 'status/explicit-failures-markup.xml' and seeing if you can
incorporate that in some manner.