Re: [text] [review] Text formal review result

From: Zach Laine (whatwasthataddress_at_[hidden])
Date: 2020-06-27 02:02:14

On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 6:05 PM Jeff Garland via Boost
<boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:

[snip]

> And now I'll say some fairly radical things. To me this just says that as
> an organization we should consider alternate paths to boost adoption.  For
> example, perhaps if a library is proposed for the standard it should
> automatically be allowed to become a boost 'experimental library' that
> would ship with releases.  The library might not be maintained by the paper
> authors, but maybe we could coax more authors into realizing there's a
> benefit to shipping here in the form of massive user exposure.   And we
> could still have a review -- but maybe the experimental acceptance wouldn't
> hinge on the results.

I don't know how this would work exactly, and I find it concerning
that we would essentially have a lower bar for stuff that is targeting
the standard, where it will eventually be chiseled into stone.

However, where we might improve would be in lowering the bar to entry
required just to submit a library for review.  These hurdles currently
exist:

- This list is not very welcoming.  One committee proposal I know of
that is exactly the right kind of thing for Boost did not submit to
Boost because they felt this list was rude and combative.  I don't
know the details, so I don't know if this particular complaint is
warranted.  More generally, this list is hard for outsiders to
penetrate; pretty good evidence for this is the fact that we have
posts here mostly from the usual suspects, and new voices don't appear
very often.  I have no suggested fixes for this, unfortunately.
- It can be hard to figure out how to submit to Boost, and once you
do, the process is pretty involved.  We've addressed part of this by
having a list of names of Boosters who have volunteered to act as
review managers for stuff targeting the standard.  Having yet more
people volunteer to walk people through the process, and/or better
document the process, would help here.  As one example, is getting
endorsements actually necessary?  The submission process page says
that it is, but that step seems to be skipped pretty often from what I
can tell.  Maybe I'm just not paying enough attention.
- The build system and other infrastructure is unlike anything
anywhere else, and super obscure, because it is not documented well
enough to do anything but copy/paste from an existing Boost lib.  We
could of course use something that is used more widely.

I want to see more std lib proposals come through Boost first, and I
think a lot of you do, too.  However, for that to happen at a larger
scale than what we're seeing today (which is me alone as far as I can
tell), we would need to sand off those rough edges I mentioned.  The
status quo is that it's simply so much easier to submit straight to
LEWG that only a crazy person would do otherwise (again, that would be
me).

I'm not willing to do this work.  I have too many irons in the fire as
it is working on committee stuff and Boost libs.  Perhaps someone here
will be sufficiently motivated to address some of these things.

Zach