Re: [boost] [asio] Issues piling up

Subject: Re: [boost] [asio] Issues piling up
From: Gavin Lambert (boost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2018-10-12 02:18:13

On 12/10/2018 13:38, Edward Diener wrote:
> On 10/11/2018 8:08 PM, Vinnie Falco wrote:
>> That's nice in theory, but Boost.Asio is generated by this script
>> which runs on the stand-alone version of the source code:
>>
>> <https://github.com/chriskohlhoff/asio/blob/master/asio/boostify.pl>
> 
> Are you saying that their is code in Boost asio which relies on asio 
> code outside the Boost repository. That does not seem like a good 
> situation to me, unless that other code is publicly accessible. Even 
> then it is better if all code directly related to a library is contained 
> within the Boost repository of that library. I am of course not talking 
> about some 3rd party library code which is popular and publicly 
> accessible by everybody.

No, that's not what he's saying.

Asio exists in two forms -- as a standalone library and as a 
Boost-integrated library.  Both have the same maintainer, and both are 
publicly available.

The standalone library is considered the "real" source and the Boost 
version is periodically generated by a script and then an "update patch" 
committed.  (Usually the two are fairly closely in sync but sometimes 
there's a longer delay -- the Boost version tends to be kept more 
"stable" than the standalone version.)

Boost.Asio itself doesn't directly depend on any outside code, but it is 
still effectively 'read only' in that regard, since if someone 
independently made changes directly to this repository then they would 
be overwritten the next time the code was synchronised with the 
standalone repository.

> I just do not want to discourage anyone who is capable and wants to help 
> maintain a Boost library for which the current maintainer(s) are not 
> addressing problems. We have far less maintainers than we have libraries 
> so it is natural to want to encourage any capable person who wants to be 
> a maintainer of a library which is not being actively maintained well.

As Vinnie said, Chris is still actively maintaining the library, 
insomuch as that relates to tracking changes from the standard and 
fixing critical bugs.  But he's less responsive to feature requests.

I don't think this is the appropriate forum for discussing that, though; 
concerns should be discussed with Chris directly.  I assume it's just a 
case of disagreement about priority and time.

In any case, unless Boost.Asio were made a true independent fork (which 
I assume wouldn't happen unless Chris stopped maintaining it entirely), 
any changes have to land first in the standalone version, so PRs or 
other maintenance requests have to be made there rather than here.