Emil Dotchevski wrote:
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 3:24 PM, Edward Diener <eldiener@tropicsoft.com> wrote:
Emil Dotchevski wrote:
But my understanding is that it contains things that may never become official part of Boost. In that case, the vault provides means for distribution of Boost-related files, for which SVN is inadequate for the same reason it's inadequate to be the only way to distribute Boost itself. I'll bite. What is "the same reason [SVN is] inadequate to be the only way to distribute Boost itself" and why should this have anything to do with the sandbox as a way to distribute Boost-related software ?
I mean, we could distribute Boost by placing releases in SVN (let's say in a "releases" folder), and have users download them through the web SVN access, but instead we distribute Boost through SourceForge. This is simpler than having to dig through the SVN repository to figure out what to download, etc.
Releasing Boost is a relatively infrequent process compared to new software or updates in the Boost sandbox/Boost vault, which occur regularly. That's why having a separate place on sourceforge for complete Boost releases while the latest Boost is under SVN does not impact anyone negatively.
The Boost Vault is similarly simpler than a giant SVN tree (I suppose the word "inadequate" was a bit excessive.)
One can place anything under SVN, including entire implementations in compressed file format, in any branch of SVN. Why not simply have a "Vault" branch of Boost's SVN and then have everyone who is used to using the Boost Vault place there software there. The end user could then use the "Vault" branch of Boost's SVN to get at it, and this would not impact other users of Boost's SVN from getting the latest Boost from the "trunk" in any way whatsoever. At least in this way there would be a single central repository where all potential Boost software resides, including new releases etc. People really need to get with the idea that SVN can be used for any type of software being released rather than thinking of it as only software undergoing incremental changes.