Re: [Boost-users] what happens between "fixed in development" and "available in release"?

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] what happens between "fixed in development" and "available in release"?
From: John Maddock (jz.maddock_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-03-20 12:47:24

>
> So what do you guys think: is there something one can do with a 
> reasonable workload ~20h/month to help the overall situation?

Yes for sure:

1) focus: decide which parts of Boost you're interested in and largely 
stick to those.
2) Try to help the maintainer make the test suite bullet-proof.  IMO the 
best maintained libraries are those with the most complete test 
coverage.  Obviously it varies a bit how much this helps: things like 
thread, futures, or other things that hit the OS directly are likely to 
be the hardest to test empirically, which may be why Niall has had such 
a hard time!
3) Filter bug reports, try to reproduce, convert bug reports into PR's, 
with really good enhancements to the test suite to prevent recurrences.
4) Talk to the maintainer, find out what really needs doing, what the 
blockers are, how PR's can be structured so that accepting the patches 
is a no-brainer.
5) If a library has a lot of bug reports and/or PR's try to figure out 
why that is.  OK no lib is perfect, but we should be aiming for as close 
to "zero maintenance" as we can get (excluding new features and/or 
modernizations).  Is it lack of testing?  A conceptual deficit?  Poorly 
structured code that can't be maintained?

Above all.... don't be scared to get stuck in!

HTH, John.