On Jun 9, 2009, at 6:10 AM, Christian Schladetsch wrote:
Hi Carlos,
I strongly suggest you do the same as Adobe did (stlab.adobe.com).
I am a fan of Stepanov, who is behind the Adobe systems.
I take your advice on-board, but I am just a guy. Making a site, positing some code, getting it used etc is a huge task; time-consuming, and expensive.
Upload it to GitHub, make a few Wiki pages there, promote it in fora. It is not hard to promote it to Boosters if you use Boost extensively, which you do. A lot of us would back an MPLish effort at cleaning up the minds of DirectX developers ;-) Create a blog, make a few entries about other API's and DirectX development., Then, Shabam!, your new helper library is revealed there, with two short samples showing the benefits, and a link to the GitHub repository.
Boost is/was a `platform` where you could get solid code sold. I know how it works. And sure, perhaps I will make my own libs and website and do all that, in the hope that it will be adopted.
Yes, please do!
But as stated previously, I am not naive and I know that the shortest path to wide adoption is via boost. Does that mean that I am using boost? Sure, but everyone that ever contributed did so because they felt it was the best distribution path.
I do not think that is the case. I.e., I do not think that most people "just" view it as a "code market." They see that their proposal is aligned with the (stated and implicit) goals and ideal of Boost and complements specific existing libraries well Some contributors might even just want to "complete the picture" without really thinking about the optimal distribution strategy for their proposal. I did so with two libraries that, in spite of hitting the core of extending the C++ language, received the massive response of utter and complete silence ;-) I did so for the love of the ideal behind Boost, for the kind of succinctness and expressivity I would love to see from younger and more pragmatic resume-gathering developers.., PS: I will promote my helper libraries on my own :-)
If DirectX doesn't get introduced to boost, then of course I will try other methods. The code at Adobe is awesome, I agree. And it sets a good example for an alternative to boost that uses boost and STL and yet is not a 'part of' boost, that is also true.
But that is also Adobe, with Stepanov. I am just a guy, so it makes sense for me to try boost first.
Stepanov is also just a guy. :-) And, it is not completely unlikely that you might get Boosters who do code for DirectX behind your effort quite early. /David