Bugs/Moratorium

From: David Abrahams (david.abrahams_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-03-24 00:08:32

<little picture>
Some recent changes have caused tests of Python modules to fail to have
the appropriate PYTHONPATH set up.

What is the point of this new gIS_DEPENDENCY() pseudo-function variable?
It seems to be true for everything other than PYD, and the fact that
it's checked causes strange assymetries. That's not the whole problem,
though. I threw in some quick fixes which seem to get things right, but
I don't have much confidence in the state of the code right now.
</little picture>

<big picture>
I don't recognize lots of the code anymore. That would be OK if the code
as a whole were more maintainable, and if we had a reliable suite of
tests that would tell us if any change caused breakage. I'm afraid that
Boost.Build is becoming a victim of its own success. People find v1 to
be so useful that they're constantly coming along with patches, each of
which causes some amount of breakage and draws our attention away from
the maintainable rewrite (v2) we're supposedly working on. Meanwhile,
since Rene has taken responsibility for v1 maintenance /and/ for the
startup code in v2, progress is impeded as he is occupied with
fascinating v1 improvements**

If we can all agree, I'd like to declare a moratorium on modifications
to v1 other than fixes for SERIOUS bugs. There are two reasons for my
suggestion:

a. in order to make progress on v2.
b. so that boost has a stable and working build system during v2
development
</big picture>

Thoughts?
Dave

**No, it's not just Rene. I did the PYD and vc6/vc7 stuff, which I
needed for my own work.

+---------------------------------------------------------------+
David Abrahams
C++ Booster (http://www.boost.org) O__ ==
Pythonista (http://www.python.org) c/ /'_ ==
resume: http://users.rcn.com/abrahams/resume.html (*) \(*) ==
email: david.abrahams_at_[hidden]
+---------------------------------------------------------------+