[Aedis] Formal Review: We could have done better

From: Vinnie Falco (vinnie.falco_at_[hidden])
Date: 2023-01-25 21:05:03

In hindsight, I feel like perhaps we collectively failed the review
process. I think that Boost.Aedis was in fact not ready for a review
and it did a disservice both to the library and the author that we
rushed to review it. Instead, the relevant subject matter experts such
as I, Alan de Freitas, Klemens Morgenstern, Reuben Perez, to a lesser
extent Christian Mazakas, Mohammed, and a few others should have taken
Aedis under our wing and helped to "get it into shape" before the
review.

Speaking for myself I wish I had put more time into helping the author
get the library into the best possible condition. Instead of waiting
until the review, I should have helped Marcelo address the flaws ahead
of time. For example:

<https://github.com/mzimbres/aedis/issues/51>

and

<https://github.com/mzimbres/aedis/issues/47>

The library should not have gone into the review without one or more
revisions to the documentation so that common questions that came up
during the review were already answered, perhaps in a FAQ section. In
particular, reviewers should not have had to ask why async_run or
async_exec (see my example exposition in issue 51 above).

I also think that the library would have benefited from a concerted
effort to get it in the hands of users. I spent a bunch of energy
ahead of time to get users for Beast before submitting it for review.
It was already deployed in production systems, and there were other
projects that started integrating it both open source and closed. We
should have at the very least advertised Aedis in places like the
redis++ repository (perhaps with a new GitHub issue). Forums, and
such. And looked for individual C++ projects already using Redis and
informed them of Aedis.

For any new libraries we should look at the lesson of Aedis and
consider whether or not a similar treatment would result in a better
review of the candidate library.

Regardless, I have the highest regard for Marcelo as he demonstrates a
mastery of Asio and a commitment to quality, even if the library's
outcome of the review is not favorable.

--
Regards,
Vinnie
Follow me on GitHub: https://github.com/vinniefalco