[boost] Release sponsorship (was: Re: Boost 1.58 schedule available?)

Subject: [boost] Release sponsorship (was: Re: Boost 1.58 schedule available?)
From: Niall Douglas (s_sourceforge_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-01-22 11:45:08

On 21 Jan 2015 at 15:23, Robert Ramey wrote:

> Maybe it's time for some new ideas? Perhaps we can create a "Release
> Sponsorship" program whereby a company which really believes needs the
> updated "integrated" release can sponsor it with a cash contribution.  The
> release would carry naming rights so a company with name like "survey
> monkey" could call it the "monkey" release with a link to it's website. 
> Bidding would start at $1000 with 50% going into the Boost General fund
> and %50 going into the release manager's general fund. 
>
> Certainly if having the newest integrated release isn't worth $1000 to
> any company on the whole planet,  it's not worth a release manager's time
> to deal with all the hassle making and distributing a new release. 

You probably were being tongue in cheek Robert, but if not then this 
might be the second time we are in complete agreement this week! Next 
thing might be pigs flying!

Regarding releases, they are highly disruptive to the develop branch 
as basically one has to down tools on feature work and spend an age 
iterating fixing up master branch such that all the other master 
branches in all the other submodules play well together on all 
supported platforms. For quickly moving libraries such as Thread, I 
can see four weeks per release being lost. Increasing release 
frequency increases that cost substantially.

Hence I do wish there was a facility for sponsors to sponsor a merge 
of develop to master. If this had been the case for Boost.Test, would 
its develop branch have remained unmerged for so many years? No, I 
think someone would have done the merge if $5000 were on the table 
for it.

Also, I think there is some scope for some libraries to be released 
quicker than Boost central. One could target the last released major 
Boost release - now we have git submodules, one simply swaps out the 
module and rebuilds the headers and docs.

Unofficially in AFIO I have been supporting combining it with any 
Boost release since the first modularised one. It has macro logic 
which adjusts what it does according to the Boost version it detects. 
I may drop that support at some point, but it's food for thought.

Niall

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