Re: [boost] [modularization] Are modular releases a goal or a non-goal?

Subject: Re: [boost] [modularization] Are modular releases a goal or a non-goal?
From: Emil Dotchevski (emildotchevski_at_[hidden])
Date: 2014-09-23 16:20:31

On Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 2:51 AM, Daniel James <dnljms_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> I was against splitting up the repo in the first place, so I'm not
> really the person to ask. But IMO the main (perhaps only) benefit is
> that it makes version control easier. Merging under subversion was a
> pain because we didn't have a coherent merge history and a monolothic
> git repo would certainly have had the same problem. By splitting the
> code into modules we can track what has been merged, and do things
> like using the develop branch of a single library with the release
> branch of other libraries.
>
> I don't really see any direct benefit to users. Maybe if we had some
> sort of package management system it could, but we don't. I suspect
> that packages shouldn't have a one-to-one relationship with git
> modules. The reorganisation of the MPL module might be a model for how
> multiple packages could be stored in a single repo.
>

Physical coupling is difficult to break, easy to introduce. That is to say
users can not possibly suffer from the many repos because it is trivial to
make a release that bundles everything together.

As for the benefits of breaking up dependencies and splitting libraries
into separate modules, they aren't limited to version control. Reducing
coupling increases the efficiency of development and maintenance work in
general, but that is only visible in very large projects. Which is why it
gets neglected.

-- 
Emil Dotchevski
Reverge Studios, Inc.
http://www.revergestudios.com/reblog/index.php?n=ReCode