Re: [boost] Boost is supposed to serve *the entire C++ community; it isn't Boost's goal to serve Boost's community*

Subject: Re: [boost] Boost is supposed to serve *the entire C++ community; it isn't Boost's goal to serve Boost's community*
From: Edward Diener (eldiener_at_[hidden])
Date: 2016-05-19 09:36:14

On 5/19/2016 5:17 AM, Niall Douglas wrote:
> On 17 May 2016 at 19:39, Edward Diener wrote:
>
>>> But I'll freely admit I have given up on trying to make any
>>> substantial changes to Boost. I prototyped as I said I would a
>>> Boost-lite transition layer suitable for a clean Boost fork which I'm
>>> using in all my own code. Nobody was interested.
>>
>> Maybe no one was interested because no one knows what you are talking about.
>
> This I think is inaccurate except maybe for your good self
> personally.
>
> I presented a plan for how to technically transition to a C++ 14 only
> Boost 2.0 at my C++ Now 2015 presentation:
>
> https://goo.gl/VFFXUl
>
> The talk was well attended, and by much of the more senior Boost
> community members.
>
> I got the impression everyone understood well what was being
> proposed. Understanding was not the issue. Agreement with forking
> Boost into a C++ 14 only edition was the issue.

OK, I wasn't at C++ Now 2015.

>
>>> The community
>>> *likes* things just the way they are: serving the Boost community,
>>> and to hell with the entire C++ community. A shame, and a waste, and
>>> I suspect in the long term self defeating.
>>
>> Boost consists of about 130 different libraries. I venture to guess that
>> there is not a single library author of those 130 different libraries
>> that wouldn't like to see his library used more by the C++ community.
>> But why you think that Boost library authors write only for other Boost
>> library authors rather than for any C++ programmer is something you need
>> to explain in specific terms. Just making that claim does not explain
>> anything.
>
> The C++ 14 only libraries contributed to date are clearly written
> first for C++ not Boost.

What do you mean that a library is "written first for Boost" ?

> They are the future we should be proactively
> encouraging into a new clean ground up redesigned fork of Boost, a
> Boost 2.0, instead of corralling them into legacy and outdated
> packaging, build, design, documentation and idioms

What is outdated about the "packaging, build, design, documentation, and 
idioms of current Boost" ?

> out of some
> misguided desire for serving the legacy Boost usership before that of
> the wider C++ community.

This is just more rhetoric without any basis in fact. People who write 
libraries for Boost inevitably write them to be useful for C++ 
programmers. In a wide variety of libraries some will be more or less 
useful for varying levels of C++ programming.

You are on some sort of crusade sir in order to push forward your 
opinion that only libraries which use the latest C++ standard are useful 
for C++ programmers. I find very little technical basis for such an 
opinion. I do agree that libraries written using the latest C++ standard 
can offer some language facilities for easier use than otherwise. But 
believing that libraries not using the latest C++ standard are not 
worthwhile is just silly.