Re: [boost] [Boost-users] [afio] Formal review of Boost.AFIO

Subject: Re: [boost] [Boost-users] [afio] Formal review of Boost.AFIO
From: Roland Bock (rbock_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-08-27 04:31:08

On 2015-08-27 08:28, Gavin Lambert wrote:
> On 27/08/2015 17:40, Roland Bock wrote:
>>> Categories 1 and 2 are utterly useless to me. I appreciate the
>>> motives and where they are coming from, but let me be clear in
>>> return: if I bring AFIO back in twelve months time after lots more
>>> work, and those same people then say the design is fundamentally
>>> flawed for reasons X, Y and Z and should be rejected, I am going to
>>> be very upset with them indeed. I think anyone would understand where
>>> I would be coming from in that response.
>>
>> So basically you are saying that anyone who votes against your library
>> for reasons 1 or 2 has no right to vote against it ever again, and you
>> will go to virtual war if they do?
>
> No, he's saying that while you're perfectly entitled to say the things
> in #1 or #2 if that's how you feel, he would prefer that you not just
> stop there, but also make comments from categories #3 and #4 as well.
Thanks, Gavin. That is a very friendly interpretation. And maybe you are
right. But even now, reading that statement from Niall again, I feel
quite uneasy:

I intend to put items #1 and #2 in my review among other things. I am
not happy about being told that this is "utterly useless".

The current situation, time constraints and my current level of
knowledge prevent me from finding critical flaws. In a potential future
review, the situation will be different, as might my knowledge.

Thus, I might find a critical flaw later on. I don't know. Maybe not. It
is not my goal. But anyway, if I do, Niall is " going to be very upset
with [me] indeed". Not cool.

> ie. don't use #1 or #2 as a justification to completely refuse to
> review the library in depth, but instead try to find other things
> "wrong" with it right now, so that they can be addressed before the
> next review, instead of first being raised *only then*.
>
>
> That's an ideal, of course, and people have limited time and may miss
> things (particularly if docs are incomplete or obscure -- but then
> *that* should be raised as an issue).  And different people will spot
> different things, which is the whole point of a group peer review.

I agree with the idea of a group peer review of course. But with his
last mail, Niall basically introduced a metric to decide which reviews
are valid and which are not. I do not think that the author of a library
under review is in the position to do that.

Things would be totally different if this were a pre-review or any other
informal discussion about AFIO. In that case, I would agree with Niall
immediately in asking for concrete details instead of potential formal
reasons for rejection.

But since this is a formal review, I object to Niall trying to install a
bias with statements like in his last mail.

Best,

Roland