Re: [boost] Boost Evolution

Subject: Re: [boost] Boost Evolution
From: David Sankel (camior_at_[hidden])
Date: 2016-05-17 13:27:20

On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 10:37 AM, Robert Ramey <ramey_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> Take a look at the CMake history.  There was a huge effort undertaken from
> the top to switch to CMake for build / test.  It was a failure because it
> tried to do it from the top down.  I'm thinking that the promoters of this
> idea concluded that the problem wasn't ambitious enough and added
> deployment to the task and built rypll.  This had as key collaborators our
> most capable and hard core developers - including David Abrahams and Eric
> Neibler.  Huge amount of expended effort but not much came out of it.
>

This is a false account of what happened. CMake was dropped because the
modularization to git was considered a worthwhile thing to do first. After
the so-called top-down transition to git (which was good for C++, but bad
for insiders), the steering committee somehow came to the conclusion that
their job wasn't to steer. After last week's future of boost session (or
lack-of rather), my understanding is that this is being revisited.

Boost cannot evolve the way it has in the past. When it was getting
started, we didn't have over-representation of groups who benefit from the
status-quo. We didn't have the idea of servicing the "Boost community"
instead of the "C++ community". Either the steering committee will step up
to protect the original vision of Boost, or the vision of Boost will change
to serve the insiders. This means life or death for boost and, frankly,
it's been dying over the past few years.

Help me Obi Wan Kanobi you're my only hope.

-- David Sankel