Re: [Asset Stewardship] About the Beman Project

From: David Sankel (camior_at_[hidden])
Date: 2024-09-10 21:33:52

On Tue, Sep 10, 2024 at 2:49 AM Andrzej Krzemienski via Boost <
boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> Let me ask again, mostly the people that promote the Beman project, why do
> you think Boost is unfit for the purpose of incubating libraries that
> target the Standard Library?
>

Well, let's start with the fact that, for a long time now, Boost is not
part of the incubation process for most libraries going into the standard.

As to why this is the case, I don't think anyone knows for sure. There's
the advent of GitHub as a C++ library distribution method, the emergence of
CMake as the industry standard build system, the aging (and loss of
relevance) of existing Boost libraries, the decreased tolerance of uncivil
online behavior, the loss of key people in leadership, an increased
prevalence of high-quality libraries being developed outside of Boost, etc.

I don't want to count chickens before they hatch, but one might question
why is the Beman project seeing success in this space in such a short
period? It could be because it's "new and shiny", maybe it's because it's
designed with today's environment in mind, maybe because the people on that
project are so great to work with (that certainly keeps me engaged), or
maybe it's because authors like getting the feedback but without the
high-stakes Boost formal review process (they get something like that from
the committee anyway). Who knows? We've got plenty of haters already
predicting the demise of the Beman project.

Why didn't the people working with Beman try to make changes to Boost that
would make it more relevant for committee work? Well, several people did
over a period of many years. Consider the Steering Committee CMake decision
and the testing of a discourse server. There just isn't enough interest in
the Boost community for making these changes, which is totally fine! Boost
still serves an important purpose, but I don't know practically how to make
it an incubator for most standard libraries while respecting its consensus
process.

It's sad there's so much negative energy in the Boost project towards the
people volunteering their free time to support it in the Boost Foundation,
even recognizing much of it is based on misunderstandings. No one should be
surprised why most of the board has steered clear from these discussions.

-- David