Re: [boost] Review quality [ was stack trace review]

-----Original Message----- From: Boost [mailto:boost-bounces@lists.boost.org] On Behalf Of Niall Douglas Sent: 02 January 2017 14:19 To: boost@lists.boost.org Subject: Re: [boost] Review quality [ was stack trace review]

On 02/01/2017 13:58, Hans Dembinski wrote:

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On 02 Jan 2017, at 14:48, Niall Douglas wrote:

For many years now I have been a champion of an additional boost-testing distribution in addition to the main distribution. To join boost-testing one simply sends a pull request adding your github repo to the superrepo. A hook script verifies the new repo compiles and passes all its unit tests against the most recently released boost distro. If after that your github repo sees no updates to its master branch in a month, it gets auto expunged from the boost-testing superrepo by a script.

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That sounds pretty cool, because it automatises a lot of the mundane things.

Sounds too clever by far ;-) If all tests don't pass, this doesn't mean it is so useless that it should be deleted, perhaps OK on some platforms? But I've been keen on an 'accepted as candidate for Boost' distribution for many years, and I would still like to see this adopted. It would lead to better (and less acrimonious) reviews because we are not expecting perfection from day one. Too few people are reviewing 'real-life' usage. We need more users and that won't happen until we have a two-stage acceptance process.

I'm very keen on automation, but I am also aware of the false quality issues it can generate. Human based release management when done well is always higher quality than automated release management. To date Boost has done releases by hand. Also, automation requires a human janitor, and to date it's been easier to find reliable release managing humans than to find reliable automation janitors willing to work for zero money.

On this can't we trust the author to move from his develop branch to master when he thinks fit? Keep It Simple Sir? Paul --- Paul A. Bristow Prizet Farmhouse Kendal UK LA8 8AB +44 (0) 1539 561830