On Sat, Mar 16, 2019 at 4:55 PM Niall Douglas via Boost-users < boost-users@lists.boost.org> wrote:
I don't see how it is a good thing for things that haven't been adopted to make it straight into the standard. What's wrong with publishing libraries, then standardizing the ones that are already de-facto standard? Github makes things super easy, publish stuff, and in a few years we know what's what and then standardization is a simple nod from the committee, reflecting the reality of what's already used in
practice.
I don't know where you're getting this from.
Ranges has multiple implementations, and has been on github for years.
Dalton's been putting together his framework in public on github, seeking to bridge LLFIO/ASIO/etc with plenty of stakeholder feedback.
Elias has had his library on github for yonks now with plenty of users. It's not as old as fmt, true, it was designed to do the inverse of fmt in a similar way.
Zach has had his Unicode library on github for years now, indeed it's even in Boost format with a fairly complete set of Boost format docs.
LLFIO has been in public view since 2013, underwent a review here in 2015, was completely rearchitected based on that feedback and has since gained a good few number of hardcore users.
Now, I'll grant you that none of these are ASIO-type popular libraries. But it's not like they lack implementation and userbase experience, either. Most of these are multi-year old codebases with real world users using them in production, and giving ample feedback rounding off the rough edges over time.
There are many libraries that pass this rather low bar. You are not saying that all such libraries qualify for standardization, are you? What, ASIO is way too good, we can't expect this sort of excellence from any other library poised to become standardized? How about this bar: for a library to qualify for standardization, it must have retained its dominant position for at least two years without any interface changes. To argue that this is unreasonable is equivalent to stating that there is nothing wrong with changing the interface after standardization.
I'll put this another way: there are plenty of standard library proposals before the committee with no reference implementation library whatsoever even attempted. There are lots more where the reference library was clearly thrown together so there was one at all, and nobody actually uses the proposed library in production.
Yes I know. Total lunacy.
They're good, relative to what else is being proposed.
Nobody is arguing that they are not good. There is no reason to standardize every good library out there. We should only standardize the ones that have already become THE standard in their respective domain.