Re: Boost vs Std library features (was: Re: [scope] Scope review starts on November 26th)

From: Jeff Garland (azswdude_at_[hidden])
Date: 2023-11-29 02:48:40

On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 6:34 PM Peter Dimov via Boost <boost_at_[hidden]>
wrote:

>
>
> This hasn't been working very well for WG21. The trend is towards
> proposals named P00xxR38 with quality often not matching the average
> rejected Boost library.
>

To be fair, most of the R38 libraries are large and difficult. But
obviously I think something important has been lost here and I'd like to
restore it. Mostly I think that's libraries in the hands of lots of users,
including committee members as users.

> LEWG is not an efficient mechanism for designing libraries, because
> iterating here is vastly faster and better than iterating at WG21 meetings.
>

Indeed.  And importantly, we have actual real users to find problems...

> (But to ensure smooth sailing one would nowadays need to remember to
> keep extensive design notes on how the library came to be this way and
> not some other, in order to produce these on demand when asked in LEWG.
>

I don't see this part as a bad thing -- even Boost is hit and miss and
documenting decisions. It's a lot of work.

> This used to be less needed in the past when LWG and Boost significantly
> overlapped.)
>

I assume you mean when LEWG basically didn't exist and it was *just LWG*.
For sure. But the community has expanded past that -- and so we need to
find new ways in my view to do the work that can't realistically be done in
LEWG in a place like Boost.  Apparently new authors don't find being in
Boost of value -- I'm hoping we can change that going forward, we'll see.

Jeff