Re: Option 1: Alliance stewardship of Boost

From: Niall Douglas (s_sourceforge_at_[hidden])
Date: 2024-08-06 14:33:29

On 06/08/2024 14:51, René Ferdinand Rivera Morell via Boost wrote:

> The svn->git transition worked like this:
> 
> * A couple of library developers implemented the process for doing the
> transition and provided a working model.
> * There were discussions on the list about that and the idea of the transition.
> * The community agreed to go to the committee and ask for a "thumbs
> up" to fully complete the transition.

I wouldn't remember it that way.

My memory is that Dave asked for the help of a select few in writing the 
tooling to do the conversion because the Boost community had proved 
singularly useless in taking a decision, and he was going to impose a 
decision as BDFL after a great deal of wailing and complaint about there 
being any change at all. He then rammed it through fairly 
unceremoniously giving people very little choice about it.

> The cmake incident went like this:
> 
> * There were lots of recurring discussions about cmake (the first one
> starting during the svn->git transition).
> * A couple of library developers started experimenting and
> implementing support of cmake for end users.
> * A couple of different developers, unaware (AFAIK) of that
> preliminary work, asked the Foundation to decide that Boost should
> move to cmake. AFAIK they didn't define what moving to cmake meant.
> But not sure as all that happened in the isolation of C++Now.
> 
> Can you spot the differences?
> 
> The successful case was to reaffirm what the community had already
> decided. The "unsuccessful" case was to usurp the community process.

Another way of looking at that is today Boost has almost complete cmake 
build support. In terms of **eventual outcome**, it has been quite the 
success, and the Dimov got that done incrementally and non-coercively.

I'd therefore say the second case example is the more productive and 
less dysfunctional personally.

Niall