Re: Do we still want develop branch?

From: Peter Dimov (pdimov_at_[hidden])
Date: 2023-11-06 17:50:58

Robert Ramey wrote:
> On 11/6/23 8:20 AM, Peter Dimov via Boost wrote:
> > Robert Ramey wrote:
> >>> Someone will need to take care of it. If not you, then who?
> >>
> >> The person who is responsable for maintenance of the library.  I really
> >> don't have a lot of extra time to deal with other peoples responsibilities.
> >
> > And how will that person know if you deliberately set things up so that
> > you aren't seeing the problem and therefore don't inform him?
> 
> He needs to write more and better tests.  If he's using the boost
> serialization library to test his software, He's got a problem.

Test coverage is important, but tests written beforehand can never
reasonably cover every usage scenario on every (as of yet unknown)
platform.

That's why the correct methodology is, when a downstream use
is broken by a change, to add tests that make sure breakage doesn't
occur again.

> I'm almost 76 year old.  Is it really a good idea to depend on me for
> the future integrity of the Boost release?

Certainly not. But that's not the question. The question is which
approach produces higher quality releases, and so far each time
you've said "I think that doing X will improve the quality" you've
been, in my opinion, wrong.